The University of Chicago Medicine’s Center for Care and Discovery is using an RFID-enabled kanban card system to effectively track inventory within its more than 100 supply rooms. The system allows the hospital to store just the amount required for a few days, and to reorder fresh supplies when necessary. Items are placed into plastic bins that are organized in the room by product categories. Each bin is divided into two sections that hold sufficient supplies for two days. When one side runs out, a clinician removes a colored kanban card with an embedded RFID tag from a slot on the front of the bin, printed with information regarding the number of items to reorder. When someone drops the card into the box, a scanner reads it and places the order automatically. This eliminates the need to physically check order status in each of the more than 100 supply rooms, and to enter data into the computer, thereby saving time and potential errors. Learn how the system has reduced costs by lowering the amount of inventory on hand, and how it has minimized waste from expired supplies that must be discarded.
Speaker: Michael Hopkins, Director of Supply Chain Operations and Logistics, University of Chicago Medical Center