Evaluation of Material Handling and Ergonomics in a University Hospital Network
March 17, 2025
Evaluation of Material Handling and Ergonomics in a University Hospital Network
Joydeep Chatterjee | Senior Engineer - PMI Corps
Summary & Scope
PMC’s Industrial Engineering team partnered with a major university hospital network specializing in tertiary and quaternary care to evaluate material handling practices across its three large facilities. The project aimed to balance workloads and manpower utilization for material handlers, reduce excessive travel and material handling, and minimize the risk of ergonomic injuries. PMC also analyzed product demand and consumption to improve slotting in supply rooms.
| Hospital | Positions | Supply |
| 1 | 24 | 35 |
| 2 | 15 | 27 |
| 3 | 48 | 35 |
Total positions and supply areas PMC covered
The scope of the study consisted of three (3) hospital locations with a total of five (5) receiving docks and five (5) sorting facilities. PMC followedsupply technicians who worked around the clock and were responsible for delivering the material and checking inventory levels. .
Maximizing Optimization in Healthcare Top 5 Concerns for this Client
Opportunity
In the current state of operations, most tasks performed by Supply Technicians rely on manual labor. The primary opportunity for the client was to reduce physical strain on employees, improve ergonomics, and cut labor costs. Addressing issues with overstocking, which causes losses in labor costs, purchase costs, and disposal of unused inventory, and understocking, which leads to costs from urgent replenishments, could also help eliminate inefficiencies that may impact patient care. These inefficiencies were caused by:
Changing Stock Locations: Frequent changes to stock locations cause supply technicians to spend more time searching for and replenishing products.
Inefficient Slotting: Slotting organizes storage spaces for efficiency. When done poorly, it increases retrieval time, which can be critical for life-saving products.
Inconsistent Inventory Practices: Inconsistent practices create inventory discrepancies, reduce visibility, and complicate demand forecasting. They also limit usable storage space and cause fluctuating inventory levels.
Extensive Routes: Poorly planned replenishment routes increase unnecessary travel and workloads, leading to faster fatigue and higher labor costs due to additional time spent covering routes.
Lack of Standard Work: Without standard documentation or practices, supply technicians rely on on-the-job training. This leads to varying work styles and approaches, creating inconsistencies in replenishment, inventory management, and overall work quality.
Approach
PMC was able to tailor a unique approach developed specifically for healthcare drawing from our extensive experienceacross multiple industries in optimizing supply chain and material handling projects. With this project PMC began by collecting data the following areas:
- PFEP: PMC collaborated closely with the hospital's internal team and its vendors to develop a Plan For Every Product (PFEP), incorporating all packaging data along with storage locations and demand information.
- Delivery Routes: PMC meticulously recorded the delivery routes for each supply technician and created detailed maps by integrating these routes with the hospital’s layouts.
- Time Studies: PMC employed predetermined time standards to conduct time studies, which provided valuable insights into work contenttimes. Additionally, this approach helped identify ergonomic issues in detailed tasks that could become problematic if repeated over extended periods.
- Storage Analysis: PMC was able to analyze how the placement of a product in the supply rooms affected the time spent on it by the Supply Technicians. The following graph shows how many times a supply technician reached for a part (Y-axis) and what levels of the rack (X-axis) they were on.
The green line shows the cumulative percentage of the product from left to right. Looking at the x-axis, categories 5 and 3 account for about 50% of the total, while adding category 2 brings it to around 65%.
Solutions
- Slotting: PMC recommended optimizing product storage locations based on demand, size, quantity, and accessibility. Time studies revealed inefficiencies caused by extra work required to stock items. Using this data, PMC identified high-demand products and relocated them to easy-access racks, saving time during replenishment and retrieval. This standardized stacking process was implemented across all storage rooms
- Two-Bin System: PMC identified high-volume products with low storage capacity that required frequent replenishment. Using our data, the client upgraded storage for these products to a Two-Bin system, simplifying replenishment, improving inventory tracking, and ensuring better material availability.
- Workload Balancing: By analyzing work content and mapped routes, PMC provided workload balancing suggestions. Routes and individual locations were leveled to achieve consistent technician utilization, reducing labor costs.
- Ergonomic Evaluation: PMC identified areas with excessive risk of ergonomic injury, including repeated bending, reaching, and walking to access items. Solutions included redesigning racks to place high-demand products at eye level, adding color coding for product categories, and customizing storage bins.
Benefits
Replenishment & Inventory Time Savings:
With PMC’s implementation of slotting & 2-bin system, there is a substantial decrease in the average replenishment times and inventory times of the supply associates. The average replenishment time savings across the larger hospital ranges from 22% to a maximum of 41% across 4 sections and 25 supply associates who have a fixed route on a daily basis.
Workload Balancing
PMC successfully balanced the workload of certain supply associates by systematically reallocating tasks and reassigning supply areas through multiple iterations all while maintaining the flow and delivery schedule without disruption or compromise.
Charts showing the Base case utilization v/s balanced utilization for a section of Sas
The current state reflects the existing replenishment system, while the future state models the impact of implementing a 2-bin system. The base case assumes no changes to supply associate routing. Scenario 3 explores how adjusting routes and balancing workloads would affect both the current replenishment system and the future 2-bin system.
Standardization of Inventory Practices & Ergonomics:
We conducted separate ergonomic and safety analyses for each hospital, documenting the findings in individual reports. Through this work, PMC identified and implemented optimal inventory practices, providing standardized work documentation that improved efficiency. These standardized processes, combined with ergonomic improvements, have streamlined daily tasks and reduced the workload for supply technicians. At Hospital 1, this approach led to a 40-hour workload reduction.
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Joydeep Chatterjee
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