There has been a rise in the demand for medical gloves owing to the demand for cleanliness and hygiene on a larger scale. No one foresees any emergency. Owing to the fatality rate presented by medical emergencies, it is important to be ready with the equipment and potential treatment.
Medical equipment includes PPE supplies and different types of examination gloves. The situation is different when any emergency occurs. The demand exceeds, and the use is on an elaborated scale. But things change when normalcy is attained. Hence, healthcare facilities and service providers should be prompt in deciding and resuming the services.
The idea of resuming the services should run parallel with the surge capacity. Before discussing the strategies for a streamlined process of the supply of medical gloves, let’s understand the meaning of surge capacity.
The capacity refers to the expertise in the management if there is a sudden increase in the volume of patients. The increase has the potential to challenge or exceed the present capacity of the facility. The havoc during the outbreak of the global coronavirus pandemic in 2020 is a clear example of the same.
Base Work For Supply Strategization
Strategizing the supply of medical gloves is incomplete until you understand some things, like the current inventory ratio and the degree of supplies. Apart from that, it would help if you understood the gloves’ utilization rate and availability of other services like the preparedness of the healthcare emergency departments and response staff. It helps in identifying the need for additional supplies.
Now, let’s discuss some strategies to help maintain the supply of medical gloves.
- Becoming Specific Of The Needs
The first thing you need to gain clarity on as a manufacturer is that you should be specific to the need. You should be well-versed with the market trends and continue using FDA-cleared gloves. While meeting the market needs, certain precautions should be taken while delivering in healthcare settings.
It would help if you understood the need for reinforcements to deal with the supply of sterile and non-sterile gloves.
- Urgency Vs. Normal Demand
The next strategy you can consider implementing is bifurcating between the urgency and the normal demand for the gloves. For example, suppose you have to deliver gloves for departments like Food and Drugs and on the other hand. In that case, you have to provide it to the industrial workers who have to perform functions with liquids using the gate vs. globe valve. You should know the ways of catering to the demand. Both can benefit your business and profits, but urgency needs to be fulfilled first.
- Meeting The International Standards While Supplying
As a healthcare equipment provider, you must take care of different things. One of the most important of them is manufacturing gloves that belong to the industry standards. You can create a range similar to the FDA-cleared gloves used for various purposes like surgical and examination needs. If you produce quality, the likeliness of the product increases. It is a profitable situation for you, and in the same step, the supply is stabilized, as your products will make it to the market without any doubts.
If you don’t go for meeting the standards and getting the approval, rejections will occur that will disrupt the supply.
- Focus On The Shelf Life Of The Gloves
Let’s take the example of non-sterile disposable gloves to understand this one.
As per the standards set by the FDA, these gloves need not have a label mentioning their expiry date. However, as a manufacturer, you can choose to designate your products with a shelf life.
It creates trust within the people who use it. If the hotel locks suppliers use these gloves to test their product’s reliability and functioning, they should dispose of them after using them. However, there is no hard and fast rule for using and disposing these gloves. It can be used past the shelf life for services like lock testing and healthcare delivery.
But, the case won’t be the same for sterile gloves.
If you are dealing with manufacturing sterile gloves, you should focus on spreading information in the form of manuals for their use and shelf life. The manual should state that the shelf life should be considered at all costs while dealing with this. Once you begin doing it, your social responsibility will create proper demand and supply of the gloves.
There are other tips you can consider and customize your strategy based on the same. They are discussed as follows:
- You can also focus on developing a variety of gloves that suit non-healthcare needs.
- You can shift to using durable materials for gloves for medical and non-medical needs. The material should be chosen based on longevity so that it can last for more hours.
- You can consider using different methods of sanitizing the gloves, which will also add to their life.
Conclusion
Be it focusing on the varied needs of gloves to ensure proper material usage and production of gloves, there can be different things that can help you bridge the gap between the demand and supply of gloves. It would help if you focused on what you do and what you can do. It will help in figuring out the areas which need improvement. The steps will benefit your business and meet the market’s supply standards.