Ryder System, Inc. and BJC Health System have received the SMI Tom Hughes Collaboration Award for their joint efforts to improve healthcare supply chain operations. The award, given by SMI, a non-profit group of healthcare providers and industry partners, recognizes collaborations that bring significant changes to healthcare logistics.
Jane Pleasants, President of SMI, stated, “With BJC’s visionary leadership and Ryder’s operational expertise, this collaboration exemplifies the spirit of this award – healthcare supply chain’s absolute best models of healthcare supply chain collaborators working together to deliver patient-centric healthcare in a time of transformative change.”
BJC Health System identified inefficiencies in its traditional supply chain model in 2019 that affected clinical staff time with patients. To address these issues, BJC partnered with Ryder as a third-party logistics provider to develop a new distribution model focused on patient care.
Tom Harvieux, Senior Vice President and Chief Supply Chain Officer at BJC, said, “To break industry norms of the past 20 years, we looked for innovation that could bring best practices from more mature supply chains, like automotive and high tech. In December 2020, we embarked on our transformational journey, and by that time, we were in the throes of a pandemic that reinforced the critical need for speed, agility, and resiliency.”
Ryder designed and launched a 416,000-square-foot Consolidated Services Center (CSC) for BJC’s East Region. This facility consolidates supplier channels and supports growth while providing automated delivery of medical supplies to 14 hospitals around the clock. Within one year of opening, the CSC handled approximately 13,000 daily lines of medical supplies.
The partnership also included highly sequenced deliveries to prioritize urgent supplies at hospital loading docks. An advanced warehouse management system combined with Ryder’s proprietary RyderShare platform enabled inventory control and real-time visibility across all operations. These systems helped maintain uninterrupted care during events such as the nationwide IV fluid shortage caused by Hurricane Helene in 2024.
As a result of these changes:
– Hospital order fulfillment rates increased from 90% to over 99%.
– On-time and complete deliveries rose from 27% to 75%.
– Order processing costs fell by 80%.
– Service levels at nursing units improved above 98.5%.
– Inventory-on-hand was reduced by 25 days.
– Real-time end-to-end inventory visibility was achieved.
Cherie Brinkerhoff, Senior Vice President of Supply Chain Solutions at Ryder, commented: “It’s extraordinary – you can’t see where one team ends and the other begins. From frontline associates to executive leadership, everyone shares in BJC’s mission to improve patient care and save lives. There are patients at the end of this supply chain; they could be our friends, our families, our neighbors. That’s why we show up every day with purpose.”
Ryder is a logistics company serving more than 20 industries across North America with services including warehousing and distribution and managing nearly 250,000 commercial vehicles.
For further details about Ryder’s work in healthcare logistics visit https://www.ryder.com/en-us/logistics/industries/healthcare.
More information about SMI and the Tom Hughes Collaboration Award can be found at https://www.smisupplychain.com/programs/thca/.
