Director’s Blog

Jul 7, 2020

COVID and Touchless Logistics for Home Delivery: Guest Post by Michael Kay PhD

Today’s blog was provided by Professor Michael Kay of the Edwards Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at NC State University.  This is a reprint of an article he published… 

Jun 25, 2020

U.S. Government Poised To Award ‘Commercial Platforms’ Contracts That Will Open Online Marketplaces To Federal Purchasers

I was recently involved in a research discussion with Chris Yukins of George Washington University’s Law School’s Government Procurement Program, and Thomas Kull from Arizona State University, exploring the impact… 

Jun 25, 2020

The PPE Shortage Nightmare is Far From Over — It’s About to Get Worse

Given the lack of discussion in the media on supply chain shortages in healthcare, one would think that this crisis has been averted, and that shortages of Personal Protective Equipment… 

Jun 24, 2020

Government’s Big Move to Electronic Marketplaces

I was recently involved in a research discussion with Chris Yukins of George WAshington University’s Law School’s Government Procurement Program, and Thomas Kull from Arizona State University, exploring the impact… 

Jun 7, 2020

Integrating “The Edge”, or “The Rise of the Machines”

Flow improvements from the integration of supply chain partners and the elimination of layers of traditional communication can also facilitate movement. Machine to Machine — or more appropriately, App to… 

Jun 1, 2020

Tom Linton’s Advice to Students: “Don’t Listen to the Status Quo!”

“If you go to a hospital and a nursing station in a hospital, there may be 2 or 3 nurses, managing 30 or 40 patients.  Each patient has a pulse,… 

May 27, 2020

The Strategic National Stockpile that Failed Us

The COVID-19 crisis arrived in the United States in February and was largely dismissed as a non-threatening issue.  In particular, the CDC was convinced that it had contained the virus… 

May 21, 2020

Healthcare Strategic Stockpile Management Remains a Big Challenge

Beginning in 2015 the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine led a standing committee to inform Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) decision-making. This committee included “…state and local public health… 

May 11, 2020

We Need Supply Chain Immunity, not Resiliency: A Position Paper

In today’s post I am sharing insights from a position paper that my colleague Dan Finkenstadt, PhD, myself, and other academic and government officers are working on.  The paper is… 

May 7, 2020

Needed: A National Governance Framework for Healthcare Supply Chains

The Tragedy of the Commons – A situation in which a shared resource system, where individual users, acting independently according to their own self-interest, behave contrary to the common good…