A new trend in sourcing Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) offers savings in excess of 25%, Isak Marais, MD of specialist PPE consultancy, Bramhope, tells SmartProcurement.
Through advanced use of technology, a dedicated PPE policy and vendor managed inventory, the procurement of PPE can be improved, says Marais.
Marais holds an MBA from Henley Management College in the UK and has specialised in ‘The Effects that E-Commerce has on Transaction Cost in The Supply and Demand Chains of Companies’.
Bramhope’s system offers global procurement through an efficient supply chain and a monitoring system that ensures efficiency in the demand chain by examining TCO rather than line/item costing.
Existing PPE procurement practices are problematic owing to the size of a typical organisation’s procurement expenditure on PPE, which is less than 1%.
“Such a small expenditure leads organisations to focus on item/line cost rather than total cost of PPE, which makes PPE procurement difficult to control and manage, and leads to wastage”, says Marais.
If buyers request a lower price on an item, then the result is a lower spec from the supplier to meet that lower price, which decreases the protection offered by a PPE item. Accidents owed to poor safety equipment are tremendously more expensive than correctly specified safety equipment. “Item/line cost basis does not take into account loss in productivity and the legal implications of a workplace accident”, he says.
Traditional PPE procurement methods incur additional costs that a technology driven system can detect and eliminate.
Bramhope offers a complete outsourced solution, a PPE consulting service that offers management reporting and control. It links the procurement system to a benchmarking system.
The data mining aspect of a PPE management reporting and control system will highlight those areas of PPE consumption that are irregular, and that would otherwise go unnoticed if an organisation is not analysing PPE usage. Theft becomes difficult to miss.
“Benchmarking and data mining systems offer substantial savings. They will detect the wrong application of a product, for example, that cheaper gloves are being consumed at 100 000 pairs a year, while the consumption of better suited gloves only amounts to 50 000 pairs a year,” says Marais.
It’s all about the correct safety product, which is certified by global standards in which it is used. This also includes linking the OHS, EHS and HR policies in with the PPE Policy.
“PPE policies need to be introduced into existing safety policies and PPE profiling must then be done so that safety equipment meets the demands of the environment in which it is used, as well as those of the individual user,” says Marais.
For more information on PPE Procurement, email Isak Marais at maraisi@iafrica.com
