The COVID-19 pandemic presented its challenges. But as our sister Medical Design & Outsourcing site reported last year, expect superstorms, fires, droughts and other extreme events driven by climate change to continue to strain the supply chain.
Problems may even get worse.
Major medtech companies are taking steps to respond to the challenge. For example, Medtronic’s Supply Chain EVP Greg Smith overall has been driving changes with a team that is mostly new to the company. Medtronic has co-located over 100 Medtronic employees with top suppliers and worked directly with commodity and raw material suppliers, CEO Geoff Martha said during the company’s first-quarter earnings call in August. Backorders are coming down.
“We’re starting to put the most acute piece of this behind us,” Martha said.
We’ll explore how the medical device supply chain is transforming during DeviceTalks West, Oct. 19–20, 2022, in Santa Clara, California. (Register here.) As executive editor of MassDevice and MDO, I’ll moderate a panel that includes Kulwant Sandhu, VP of integrated supply chain at Outset Medical, and Michael Maszy, VP of operations at Shockwave Medical.
As Sandhu said in a recent LinkedIn post: “With the world’s supply chains under more scrutiny than perhaps ever before … supply chain professionals are working harder to improve resilience, boost efficiency and continue delivering for customers.”
