Future-Ready Supply Chains!
Supply Chain Management is essential across all industries in managing the flow of goods, services, and information to meet organizational demands while optimizing costs. Over the years, this field has grown, incorporating innovative technologies like artificial intelligence, automation, and Six Sigma to enhance efficiency and resilience. In healthcare, the Supply Chain ensures that essential medical supplies and equipment are readily available to support quality patient care. Integrating advanced strategies and technologies redefines the Supply Chain’s function to achieve seamless operations, minimize disruptions, and provide strategic support to organizations’ long-term goals.
John Candito, the Administrative Director of Supply Chain Management @ Onvida Health in Yuma, AZ, is a transformative leader known for his strategic planning and dedication to building effective Supply Chain models that meet operational and financial objectives. His approach focuses on collaborative relationships with internal stakeholders and external partners to enhance value-driven processes. With a commitment to servant leadership, he actively mentors future Supply Chain leaders and promotes accountability within his team. Through his proactive guidance, John ensures that his department supports organizational needs and contributes meaningfully to healthcare Supply Chain innovation.
Onvida Health Yuma Medical Center benefits notably from John’s expertise as he develops and implements sophisticated Supply Chain strategies that align with the organization’s mission to Build a Healthier Tomorrow through high-quality healthcare. His role includes managing resources, optimizing inventory, supporting cost savings and adopting technologies that drive efficiency and resilience within the hospital’s Supply Chain operations. As a leader in healthcare Supply Chain innovation, Onvida Health Yuma Medical Center strives to be at the head of modernizing Supply Chain practices, focusing on areas such as onshoring, AI-driven predictability, and competitive resource management to meet growing industry demands, and achieving a sustainable impact on healthcare delivery.
Let’s explore John’s advanced supply chain strategies:
Adapting Supply Chain Across Industries
John’s journey in Supply Chain Management began in 1999 when he joined a leading Aerospace and Defense organization. That organization practiced Supply Chain Management very effectively and earned many awards, recognitions, and achievements in its Supply Chain practices. Having that experience and model to lean on has guided John through his Supply Chain career in all industries that he has worked in.
The foundation of what defines world-class Supply Chain Management is what he has pushed to achieve in every organization he has worked for. After over a decade in the Aerospace and defense industry, John left and had a short stay in the commercial industrial industry before landing a career in healthcare. Through all of these moves, he believes Supply Chain is Supply Chain; it’s just how you apply it to different industries. There are a lot of differences and a lot of similarities at the same time.
Strategic Supply Chain Planning
In his role, John strategically plans, directs, and develops the Supply Chain model to meet operational and fiscal objectives related to supplies, services, equipment, inventory management, logistics management, human resource management, new technology assessments, and other support management functions.
He develops and manages an annual budget and supports balanced scorecard measures by creating projects that align with organizational goals. He forges and builds strong, trusting relationships with internal stakeholders, clinical leaders, peers, suppliers, and community partners. His strategies and directions help Onvida Health Yuma Medical Center achieve its mission of Building a Healthier Tomorrow.
Guiding and Developing Future Leaders
John’s leadership style is servant leadership, with an emphasis on driving accountability. He has an open-door policy and is available to all team members anytime. He believes in setting a positive example as a role model, providing real-time feedback and knowledge sharing to team members to help guide their journey, creating and supporting their educational opportunities, and providing a vision to make the following suite of leaders for the Supply Chain department.
John believes in accountability and being accountable for performance and results. He has learned a lot over his career from watching other leaders, both good and bad, and picking up those key tendencies and attributes that drive success – while avoiding ones that deteriorate trust and enable bad outcomes. He has been very fortunate to have some good people to model – starting with his parents – and he feels he owes them all recognition for becoming the leader he is today.
Continuous Improvement in Supply Chain
Lean and Six Sigma philosophies have highly influenced John’s leadership within the Supply Chain industry. He was an early adopter of Six Sigma in his Aerospace and Defense days, when a new CEO, Dan Burnham, joined the organization and impressed upon all business unit leaders to drive strong Six Sigma participation through their organizations.
John has seen the value of Lean and Six Sigma through their methodical, process-driven approaches. He believes that always having an eye for continuous improvement allows one not to miss the little things that can make a big difference. Healthcare is an industry that was/is lagging in the implementation of Six Sigma, and John drives to do his part to fill that gap and create competitive advantages for the organization.
Planning for Urgent Situations
John recently attended a national Supply Chain conference in Phoenix as an industry panel member, where this discussion came up as part of a strategy session. The challenge in the Supply Chain is for every supplier to be 100% on time, with near-perfect quality, every time.
When you consider the number of vendors at a first-tier level that an organization depends on, and then factoring in all of the lower-tiered suppliers down to the raw material that supports the first-tier’s success, along with all the resource management and constraint issues post-COVID, it’s hard to envision what success looks like.
The paradigm becomes very large very quickly. To be a successful Supply Chain leader, you must know that there will be another urgent situation emerging—whether from a natural disaster, a port strike, manufacturer backorders, the next pandemic, and the list goes on and on. Creating a plan to work through those urgent issues when they arise is what makes a Supply Chain leader valuable. Preparedness is key.
Specifically, John believes some of the challenges over the next one to two years will be understanding and adopting what makes sense in the AI world and applying it to Supply Chain practices for better predictability, forecasting, supply savings, etc.
Additionally, how organizations will handle the fine line between global sourcing for the lowest cost versus reshoring or onshoring for the lowest risk (what was learned during COVID was a glaring deficiency in this space) is what he believes the best organizations will do to figure out how to create a model that finds a balance between these two strategies.
Time Management and Personal Fulfillment
John believes maintaining a healthy work-life balance is essential in today’s culture as organizations demand more from leaders. He feels it’s important to understand that it’s impossible to be highly effective at work if one is not happy outside of work. John focuses on family first and stays involved in as many family activities as possible.
John also relies on hobbies that he has had for most of his life to keep him grounded and provide a sense of reprieve when he’s away from work. As hard as he works, he wants to play equally hard, and that balance is really important to him. Time is not an infinite commodity; each person only has so much of it.
He believes it’s important not to let the little things in life get in the way and to hold on to the things one truly loves. A leader who can achieve this balance successfully will serve their organization exceptionally well and not live with regrets.
For John, the key to success is hiring, mentoring, and developing a strong team of leaders who can manage the department and handle any day-to-day events while he’s away. That security allows him to be away from work without fear, worry, or concern over adverse outcomes.
Staying Updated with Leading Organizations
According to John, staying attached and involved with leading organizations such as APICS, ISM, AHMMA, and others allows him to always have the latest Supply Chain information at his fingertips. In this changing world, staying updated with current trends, practices, and strategies impacting the Supply Chain industry is very important.
John relies on a network of close peers, educational institutions, and professional affiliations to make this possible. He is also an avid reader of Supply Chain publications, and he uses all of these different avenues of information to create and align strategies that fit within or complement Onvida Health’s specific model.
Collaborative Supply Chain Execution
Candito highlights that current trends shaping the future of Supply Chain Management include artificial intelligence, onshoring, strategic partnering with suppliers, finding ways for the Supply Chain to add value at the bottom line, and understanding how these variables contribute to providing value-based care throughout the Supply Chain.
The ability to work with vendors and continue to achieve a value-based care approach is challenging as costs continually increase across the economy, labor costs are escalating, and payer reimbursement is lagging. Some easy wins available years ago have moved on, and new savings opportunities are more difficult to identify and achieve.
A triple-aim approach—specifically around reducing per capita costs—requires more intricate strategies and approaches than were historically achievable. The new model involves partnering with manufacturers, sophisticated contracting strategies, and including clinical teams to share in all aspects of Supply Chain execution. To achieve maximum benefit and outcomes, physician involvement and alignment are crucial in this space.
Advice for Aspiring Supply Chain Professionals
John’s advice for someone looking to begin a career in Supply Chain right now would be:
- Get an excellent education from a leading global Supply Chain institution. Several excel in this space, and more colleges and Universities are adding Supply Chain as a major.
- Do an internship and as much mentoring as possible with different organizations that execute their Supply Chains at a level that is benchmarked by others.
- Understand the impact that supply costs can have on an organization’s success. Supply costs are generally the second largest cost in any company, behind labor.
- Understand that this industry is not for the faint of heart. You will be challenged throughout your career, and just when you think you’ve figured out the secret sauce, somebody will drop a hair in it. Many times, the Supply Chain is a thankless industry. Being strong-willed, adaptable and resilient is paramount to success.
In John’s view, the Supply Chain has grown over the last quarter century from a department where things were simply “tossed over the wall” for purchases to happen to now being seen as an integrated and strategic part of an organization that can impact bottom-line performance along with the overall success of an organization in terms of public opinion. There will never be a dull moment, and plenty of upside and reward are possible.
Innovative Approaches in Supply Chain
Over the next few years, Onvida Health Yuma Medical Center will explore different strategies in which the Supply Chain is no longer just a cost center but can also engage in the revenue-generating side of the business.
The Onvida Healthcare system is developing some exciting new strategies in the Supply Chain space. When these strategies come to fruition, they could positively impact healthcare across the industry. At a local level, the focus is always on refining and improving operational capabilities and strategies, controlling costs, and providing top-notch support to our clinical partners.
In the new year, Onvida Health will be implementing automation, AI, robotics, and other technologies that will enable the system to align with its goal of being a world-class Supply Chain organization.
