How Medtronic’s optimized supply chain gets products to patients in need

In emergency rooms, solutions are often determined by the immediate needs of the patient and the resources available, even when circumstances are challenging. Similarly, in business, many companies may adopt a reactive approach to supply chain planning, opting for the most accessible and expedient solutions rather than investing the necessary time and effort into strategic planning for long-term success.

But not Medtronic, a global technology Life Sciences leader. With more than 95,000 employees across 150 countries, the Minneapolis-based MedTech giant has pioneered future-forward health devices of the digital age, enabling personalized care for over 78 million patients diagnosed with the most prevalent afflictions of today’s world: heart disease, cancer, hypertension, diabetes and more.  

It’s only natural that Medtronic’s progressive executives would want to see the same innovation in their supply chain planning — to deliver lifesaving products to patients quickly and efficiently. 

Yet executives faced several obstacles:  

• Organizational silos existed, relying on disparate planning systems and manual spreadsheets.  
• Medtronic’s supply chain management system did not respond well to real-time demand, limited by IT constraints that fragmented functions and made data unreliable.  
• Current siloed planning processes did not provide data visibility to make decisions that optimize revenue and manage pricing, income and margins. 
• Through a collaboration portal, inventory position data was being shared with key suppliers, who would manually respond as to whether they could meet the demand. This information was not fed into other plans, and systems were disparate.  
• With employee turnover, tribal knowledge of systems eroded over time and workarounds became ineffective substitutions for needed change.  

As a result of these issues, valuable product inventory languished while other important materials were in short supply. The status quo threatened to impact Medtronic’s customer service response times for medical professionals and patients, which could eventually stunt growth, jeopardize revenue and decrease patient satisfaction. 

Medtronic turned to EY teams whose supply chain professionals — part of a global network of leaders and change agents — knew how to turn the idea of transformation into reality, drawing from a stable of powerful ecosystem partners. One such partner is Blue Yonder, which offers advanced planning solutions to help synchronize forecasting and planning to production, distribution, transportation and procurement.

EY teams have an acute awareness that transformations require more than just a technology upgrade to be successful. EY research shows that 96% of transformation programs experience turning points in which a sense of progress becomes stagnation and threaten to run off-course. Keeping this in mind, the EY team knew that a sophisticated supply chain planning solution would need to touch many functions in many places, and the proper way forward must involve an end-to-end combination of people, processes and technology. 

For Medtronic, a joint team of EY consultants were tasked with implementing an advanced planning system by Blue Yonder, alongside resources from our change management and personnel training teams. The full power of the EY organization was mobilized for Medtronic to reimagine supply chain planning — turning complexity into simplicity, revealing visibility in place of opacity and delivering value for patients at reduced costs. 

By leveraging Blue Yonder the system becomes aware of critical events and prescribes solutions to manage risks and opportunities in both demand and supply, improving planner productivity and supply chain resilience. It drives consistencies and enables operational efficiencies that optimize costs to increase revenue and deliver savings that can be reinvested in new product development and new capabilities. This enables Medtronic to be better positioned to realize its performance objectives through higher forecast accuracy and accelerated decision-making, resulting in better margins and greater customer satisfaction. 

The EY teams developed the communications and train-the-trainer strategies which Medtronic executed to upskill 700 employees onto the system. Change management templates were also created to make that process seamless and to ensure user adoption. 

“In all we do, we are laser-focused on creating lasting value,” said Ehap Sabri, EY Americas Supply Chain Technology Co-Leader of Planning. “We are relentless about enabling results, achieved through technologies, processes and people – so that our clients can move forward with confidence and continue achieving results from our transformations for years to come.”