#InThisTogether: 07 MAY 2020

With everything that’s going on during the COVID-19 crisis, we want to share stories about what Cook people are doing during this difficult time. All around the Cook world, we are #InThisTogether, and we would love to hear stories about how you and your coworkers are stepping up to make a difference. If you have a story to share, please email us at BlogEditor@CookMedical.com.

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The value of building on trust

By Jon Hancuff, manager, global Editorial Content

One of the core tenets upon which Cook was founded was Bill Cook’s emphasis on relationships; building professional relationships by listening and learning, by being true to your word, by providing “quality products in a timely manner,” by being innovative and prepared, and earning trust every day through hard work. Many of our company’s most important devices were developed as a result of relationships between the company and medical pioneers capable of solving real medical problems. Cook has worked to build relationships with entities like government agencies, the communities in which our facilities are located, purchasing groups, trade organizations, industry coalitions, and vendors and suppliers.

The value of relationships built on trust, as we have all learned during the COVID-19 pandemic, is especially evident during times of adversity.

Cook’s Global Procurement and Supply Chain function, one of the company’s newer functions, has seen this on many different levels as they have worked to ensure that we always have an adequate supply of personal protective equipment (PPE) to keep employees on-site safe and to keep production moving.

PPE includes anything that can protect a person from the environment around them, including items such as gloves, goggles, safety glasses, shoe covers, hair nets, garments, coveralls, and face masks. At Cook facilities, many of these things also help significantly limit the amount of foreign matter in controlled manufacturing areas where our devices are assembled.

They are such common sights around Cook, that they are easy to take for granted. But with the spread of COVID-19, these items have gone from routine to premium status.

Support and communication

In January, Shawn McConnell moved from being the procurement manager at Cook Vandergrift to being the Global Category manager for Facilities and Maintenance for Global Procurement and Supply Chain. He now works with the Procurement managers at the different Cook entities to make sure they have the necessary supplies. Almost immediately upon starting his new position, he began working with Cook Hong Kong and Cook Australia to look at potential sources of PPE in the US as COVID-19 spread in APAC.

“At that time, the US in general was sending a lot of materials to that region to help out and support them as needed,” Shawn said.

Not long after the first case of COVID-19 was confirmed in the States in February, the Procurement function began to see some red flags from suppliers—lead times (the time from when an order is placed until it is fulfilled) started increasing, as did prices.

“Prior to COVID-19 the market price for a surgical face mask was about five to ten cents and we saw some prices go up to $1.50 to $2.00 per face mask,” Shawn said.

“We didn’t pay that—we were able to get it down lower by getting a higher order quantity—but that was a big indicator there,” he continued.

To give some perspective on the financial impact of that price jump, before COVID-19, globally Cook was using 60,000-70,000 face masks per month. That number has doubled since the pandemic began.

As is often the case during tumultuous times, there are many people who try to take advantage of the situation for their own gains. Out of the blue, the Procurement team began receiving numerous emails from vendors they had never worked with who claimed they could get face masks and gloves to Cook within a week for prices far below the rest of the market. Tellingly, many of those vendors said they would need 50-100% of the payment up-front before they could ship the items.

“Things start sounding a little sketchy, and you realize it isn’t worth taking this big of a risk—let’s just continue working with our good suppliers that we have good relationships with,” Shawn said. “It’s times like this that you really find out who your key suppliers are—who you can work best with. They are the ones who are willing to help you out and work with you.”

The other relationships that the Procurement is leaning on, are the ones their function has cultivated inside Cook. Communication among the different facilities is happening almost every day.

“We want to ensure that everyone has what they need,” Shawn said. “Usage of supplies is fluctuating day to day—we are having to shift some stock from facility to facility depending on those fluctuations.”

Going above and beyond

Additionally, Procurement employees at other facilities are helping locate additional reliable vendors in their regions to fill any potential voids in equipment. Shawn used Cook Hong Kong as an example.

“They have been a good help for us with identifying those suppliers, especially in the Chinese market, that can be utilized,” he said.

“Were we sweating it at some points?” Shawn continued. “Yeah, but no. We knew that we had suppliers who had the inventories coming in, and some of them were already holding inventory at their warehouses for us. We haven’t ever been in a position where we were going to have to stop production because we were out of PPE. We have tried to have about a month or more of safety stock at each location.”

While many companies only pay lip service to their values, the actions of Cook employees throughout the pandemic have continually buoyed Shawn.

“This experience has really shown how much of a family company Cook is and how much of a family we all are here at Cook,” Shawn said.

“We have sites helping each other out— and not just the medical device manufacturing sites, but all of Cook Group—and we are helping them. At the end of the day, we all rely on each other—we are all one company. I think that this is really showing that,” he said.

“Everybody is stepping up, to be honest with you,” he continued. “I haven’t come across one single person who I talked to who hasn’t been willing to go above and beyond their daily normal duties to help other people out in the Cook company.”

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