Backorders

If you have been working in the field talking to customers, taking phone calls from purchasing managers, or struggling to get ahead of all the work orders in your department, the last few months haven’t been easy.

Right now, unfortunately, we are behind on shipment of products to our customers. This can and does happen around this time of year (but not usually to this extent). The holidays, winter weather, illness, and other factors impact our production output each winter. To try to get ahead, we ask for extra work from our production teams to build what we call “winter stock.” It makes sense to plan ahead.

This year, though, there have been some additional obstacles. We’ve been making significant changes to our Quality System. These improvements are important in helping us get ahead of changing regulatory standards, but it takes time to learn these new processes, slowing down our output. This, in addition to the normal winter challenges and some raw materials shortages, is creating longer delays than usual.

Some of our challenges are more positive: we have landed a few new large contracts that we need to fulfill within a certain timeframe. That’s good news but it adds to the strain on the system. .

In comparison to normal years, we’ve had more challenges to work through. The bottom line is that for some products, we do not have that winter stock ready and waiting to ship like we normally do.

Several teams feeling the impact

To try and get back on track, our production teams have been putting in a lot of extra hours. They are working overtime during the week, working Saturdays and Sundays, and some departments have added second shifts. To put that in perspective, our production teams at Cook Inc. locations have put in 53% more overtime in the first 9 weeks of the year compared to last year. Extra time spent working means time away from family and friends, means extra burdens are put on their families.

We have hired extra workers to help build products, and we are advertising to recruit new employees, but it will take time to train them. We usually say that new employees aren’t ready to build products on their own until they’ve been trained for two to four months. So it’s not a quick fix, but the efforts and the dedication of our manufacturing employees will bring us back to on-time delivery of products. We hope to be back to normal inventory levels by late spring or early summer.

Jim Drake, in post-sterilization services, says he knows it will all be worth it in the long run. “I see good things coming in productivity and efficiency that will help us serve our customers better.” His team has been working seven days a week. He looks forward to getting his life back. “My golf clubs are probably buried somewhere in my garage. I’ll have to dig them out.”

Every day, our sales representatives out in the field are facing customer questions about product delivery delays. That puts our reps in a tough spot, and they are working with each other to share stock and recommend alternative products to customers–even if that means recommending a competitor’s product.

Critical Care rep Giovanna Aviles admits that in the past, her SBU has not experienced many backorders, so this is all new to her. She has helped her customers adjust to the situation by over-communicating. “I call them weekly and talk through their orders, offer substitutions that are also on their contract,” she says. “I also apologize and empathize. Our customers just want to be heard.” It can also help to have a manager call if the customer is particularly upset. Having a manager take the time to reach out to them makes them feel like they matter.

For Interventional Radiology rep Carla DelVecchio, the product delays have been more challenging. “We had a drainage backorder last year that was really tough. And now this year, out of every product line we sell, there’s at least one product on backorder.” She says, though, “Every company goes through a setback at some point. This is our setback.” Like Giovanna in CC, Carla says apologies to customers can go a long way. She also explains that an increase in sales of some products have put us in a bind, not having enough stock to cover the increase. “We can either sit and complain about it or just do our job,” she says.

The teams answering the phones in Customer Service and Sales Ops are also getting hit with a lot of calls and questions from customers and from our sales reps. We are working on getting better information to them so that they aren’t put on the spot.

Thank you

I have heard from so many of you about the challenges you are facing because of the delivery delays. It has affected many more people and teams than we have time to highlight in this blog post. I just want to personally say thank you to everyone who is working so hard to get us out of a tough spot. I see all the extra work and sacrifice, and I know it is hard.

As we continue to work with the FDA and they continue to ask us to improve our systems, we are going to have even more challenges ahead. We will have times of backorders, periods where we are all out of our comfort zone working on projects we never anticipated, and times when we think we just couldn’t do any more. But we will get better and we will continue to build great products. We will because we have watched those who come before us overcome the obstacles that were put before them over the last 52 years. And we will because it’s the right thing to do for Cook and for the patients who need our products every day.

Thank you for being willing to do the hard work. It is appreciated.

If you have a story to tell or someone to thank, leave a comment below. We will make sure the right person sees it.