Blue Diamond Supply Route to be Removed
NHS Supply Chain continuously review our supply routes to deliver supply chain excellence and best value to customers and patients through innovation, service and clinical expertise. To improve service levels and reduce lead times, we have taken the decision to remove the Blue Diamond supply route from our service offer.
Suppliers will be actioned in three stages over a 12 month period, based on current routes, service level, volume and utilisation of Inbound Logistics. Products will be moved to either stock or eDirect route, offering customers far greater accessibility and visibility of transactions compared with Blue Diamond and an estimated 5% increase in delivered service level for these products.
Moving 60% of demand into stock, also gives customers an opportunity to review ranges, switch to stock products to consolidate demand and maximise the benefit of the products moving into the stock route.
In addition, the removal of internal consolidation processes associated with Blue Diamond will reduce lead times by up to 72 hours for 60% of the impacted product demand and by 48 hours for the remaining 40%.
Our customers are supportive of this move away from Blue Diamond, an improvement which has been made possible due to the extra capacity within the network, created with the opening of Gorsey Point. In the longer term, we aim to be able to support a service where NHS Supply Chain is able to consolidate small deliveries of non-stocked items with deliveries of stock items in a transparent, controlled way.
Whilst it will take several weeks before any changes are implemented, we understand that the removal of the Blue Diamond route will raise some questions, comments and queries. Customer and supplier teams will be on hand to provide guidance and support throughout the process and regular updates to the product matrix will be made available via the ICN section of the website as the supply routes for NPCs begin to transition.
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Product Update Removal of Blue Diamond Supply Route (ICN 2544)
To improve service levels and reduce lead times, we have taken the decision to remove the Blue Diamond supply route from our service offer.