Sana

The 2020s have brought with them a multitude of challenges and thus a number of changes, such as increased cost pressure, legal requirements and new quality requirements for hospitals, which have largely affected the healthcare sector. The supply chain and scheduling of Sana Einkauf & Logistik GmbH has not been spared. In addition to ensuring patient care, they were also confronted with tense supply chains and new legal requirements, such as the Supply Chain Due Diligence Act or the Ordinance on Medical Products. But how can efficiency and quality be ensured in this industry? 

Sana Einkauf & Logistik GmbH has realised a flagship project together with Processand. The Group's approximately 60 facilities, as well as other customers, are now benefiting from the many advantages of process mining for purchasing and logistics - and the implementation of further projects is planned.

Strategic purchasing for hospitals, operational procurement, warehousing and logistics as well as nationwide full-service hospital supply: 
Sana Einkauf & Logistik GmbH is the only service provider in Germany that can offer healthcare facilities complete care from one single source. Around 225 dedicated employees work in the leading service company of Sana Kliniken AG. They negotiate a sales volume of over 3.3 billion euros annually.

As a service provider, Sana Einkauf & Logistik GmbH guarantees the reliable availability of medical products and pharmaceuticals for healthcare facilities - from clinics to medical care centres. The continuous growth of the Group has meant that this task has steadily grown. The changing market and supply situation brought additional challenges.

Sana's scheduling is based on a comprehensive SAP solution, supplemented with customised tools. This worked well at first: a lot of relevant information was recorded there, but unfortunately the overall view was missing. Data had to be pulled from the ERP system at different points and reports had to be created in Excel, which was time-consuming and error-prone. Due to the large number of reports from different data sources, a lot of time was spent preparing the data instead of analysing it, e.g. for inventory valuation or delays in the procurement process.

Annekatrin Steudel, Head of Scheduling at Sana Einkauf & Logistik, wanted a traffic light system that would make this controlling easier for her: 

"We used a mixture of experience and gut feeling to ensure day-to-day operations, but we wanted more - namely an overview of processes and key performance indicators relevant to management that is constantly updated and thus the ability to recognise problems at an early stage and tackle them in advance."
Annekatrin Steudel, Head of Scheduling at Sana Einkauf & Logistik

The pandemic and the associated massive disruption to supply chains brought the need to be able to react quickly even more into focus. Transparency and fast processing of the many lines of data as well as an easy-to-understand presentation of the data analyses were the order of the day.

Sana's scheduling department reached its limits, particularly when it came to analysing mass data movements. Additional workload due to increased procurement and backlog management led to a capacity bottleneck in the department that urgently needed to be eliminated.

In 2021, the Group decided to use Celonis' process mining technology and expanded it to include material management at the beginning of 2022. The project was managed by Marajke Moser, Consultant for Business Process Management at Sana Einkauf & Logistik, in collaboration with Annekatrin Steudel, Head of Dcheduling. The technical implementation of the Celonis software solution was entrusted to Processand, an implementation and consulting company that works on cross-functional data analytics issues.

"We had ambitious goals that we wanted to realise in the shortest possible time. So it made sense to bring a reliable partner like Processand on board. Not only does their experience bring a different perspective to the project, but we also benefit from their expertise from other industries."
Marajke Moser, Consultant Business Process Management at Sana Einkauf & Logistik Gmb

Before the implementation began, the Sana project team developed a concept and mock-ups internally, which Processand implemented technically in the second step. The collaboration between the two partners extended throughout the process and was characterised by an inspiring exchange. The questions and expertise of the specialist departments were taken into account. 

The classic scheduling process focuses on the planning and organisation of resources and aims to ensure that all required resources are available in the right place at the right time. With the help of Processand, the relevant data could be visualised graphically in dashboards, including the desired traffic light system. With this tool, the department is now able to answer questions in a time-efficient manner, e.g. how stock levels can be brought into economic harmony with security of supply or how changes in customer consumption behaviour can be identified. The result: delivery situation, availability of goods and customer consumption behaviour at a glance - a significant reduction in workload.

"Thanks to process mining, we now have transparency at the touch of a button. We see quality improvements every day and can therefore continuously work on our processes." 
Annekatrin Steudel, Head of Scheduling at Sana Einkauf & Logistik
 

Processing and visualisation in dashboards makes incorrect settings and data inconsistencies visible and the processes behind them can be corrected. The sustainable safeguarding of processes is made possible by identifying the causes of errors. Thanks to Celonis, Sana can sometimes even avoid errors before they occur.

Some advantages at a glance:
 

• Full transparency: Visualisation of the correlation of which items are available in which warehouse, which customer orders are open, how suppliers are performing or where there are bottlenecks. 
• Flexible evaluation: A wide range of data can be displayed with just a few clicks and efficiently compared with each other using appealing visualisation. 
• Data-based decision making: Fast readjustment of scheduling parameters for economical warehousing based on simple correlation of order behaviour/average delivery times/range and stock levels.
• Daily risk management: Critical stock levels are quickly identified and enable targeted control and avoidance of supply bottlenecks or excess stock.

"Our solution covers a wide range of scheduling aspects, as it links warehouse data with purchasing and sales data. This includes stock levels and stock value trends, range of coverage, evaluation of safety stock and optimisation of stock transfer potential based on different location requirements." 
Julian Sölderer, Data Scientist at Processand

Celonis has made it possible to create transparency, visualise data flows and processes and derive recommendations for action. The first goal - to manage the department's processes in a lean and agile way - has already been largely realised. Thanks to transparency and working at the touch of a button, the department is agile enough to cope with the pressure to grow and change. Many measures are already making the team's work easier. And yet there is still a lot in the pipeline.

"Sana is leading the way here as a pioneer in the healthcare industry. The really innovative thing is that multidimensional data-supported analyses are carried out on a daily basis with the help of process mining and those responsible can make data-based decisions."
Simeon Block, Senior Business Process Consultant at Processand

The next step is aimed at complete tracking of the flow of goods: from ordering "on the ward" to delivery. The existing use case is to be linked with the module supply use case in order to homogenise ordering behaviour and warehousing and to optimise data inconsistencies. This link is intended to help streamline the portfolio across all Sana clinics, recognise similar products and standardise the range, and generally connect interfaces within the company.

But Annekatrin Steudel is thinking even further ahead: she is planning to implement a control tower that will enable targeted backlog management. To this end, different data sources are to be linked, visualised in a transparent dashboard with a traffic light function and prioritised to enable efficient workflow control within the team. This maximises proactive actions to ensure that goods are in the right place at the right time. 

Sana Einkauf & Logistik is therefore well on the way to setting an industry-wide benchmark in terms of cost-effectiveness and process efficiency.

Read more about how we can help