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From natural disasters like hurricanes and earthquakes to pandemics, cyberattacks, and labor strikes, companies have to navigate so many complexities to get goods where they need to go.
What's their secret weapon to operating within the unknown?
It’s the people.
Welcome to Supply Chain Champions, the show that showcases the stories of those who keep supply chains running smoothly. We're here to highlight their untold stories and share lessons they’ve learned along the way.
Join us as we peel back the curtain on the people who make supply chains work and enhance your own career in the process.
Tune in. Get smart. Move forward.
Ammie McAsey [00:00:00]:
A supply chain will never be without people. There will always be people. We cannot automate everything. And there is an importance of treating people right that needs to continue to be a part of all supply chain professionals and how they think about building out solutions.
Eric Fullerton [00:00:21]:
Welcome to Supply Chain Champions, the show brought to you by project44, where we're talking to the people who make supply chains work. Hello and welcome to another episode of Supply Chain Champions. I am your host, Eric Fullerton and I'm joined today by Ammie McAsey, now from a part-time summer job as a shipping clerk. Now coming up to 18 years at McKesson. Ammie, I want to start our podcast with a question. You've been at McKesson now in their Senior Vice President of Customer Supply Chain Operations role for over seven years. As I just mentioned, 18 total years there. In your time and in your experience from that first job to now, what are some things that have changed and what has stayed the same?
Ammie McAsey [00:01:15]:
Yeah, well, thanks Eric, and excited to join you today. You know what stayed the same is this is still a people business. This is still an opportunity where we lead people on a daily basis. Maybe what's changed is the technology that allows us to be more efficient, the robots that we've quote, employed in the warehouse next to our people. But at the end of the day, it's still a people business and we're still driven by efficiency and by process improvement and by making things smoother across the supply chain. So starting as a part time clerk to where I am today, I still anchor on the people and those that I have the privilege to lead and those that are part of the team that makes supply chain happen, not just in McKesson but across the world.
Eric Fullerton [00:02:05]:
Awesome. It's a great answer and something we've, we've heard consistently in our conversations on the podcast. So I'm not surprised to hear you say that. So just for your background in this specific role, you're currently leading the distribution strategy for all of the U.S. for pharmaceuticals brand, generic specialty. For folks that are listening, can you explain a little bit about McKesson's operations and your role and how that kind of all fits together? What's the remit there?
Ammie McAsey [00:02:36]:
Sure, so our supply chain, as in what I have leadership of, is really from the purchasing of finished drugs. So think they're already bottled or there's already syringes filled the purchasing and then the movement through the supply chain all the way to the customer. Customer being a pharmacy, a hospital, maybe a closed door pharmacy, but essentially bringing all of those products in through a distribution center or a multi-tiered distribution center with the right regulations and the quality behind it, which is really important. And I'll probably talk about that quite a bit as we go through our time together. But whether it's temperature-controlled or regulated by the dea, we have different requirements in both in storage and in shipping. And ultimately it's that delivery to the pharmacy that enables the patient care that we care so much about. And really making sure that we're delivering patient care.
Ammie McAsey [00:03:36]:
We're also delivering products into oncology clinics so that cancer patients can receive treatment. And I like to say that we were Amazon before Amazon was Amazon, because over 180 years we've been delivering product that's ordered tonight by tomorrow morning. And that's what life saving critical pharmaceutical supply chain really boils down to, is being efficient, but making sure that we're preserving the quality of the drugs as they move through the supply chain and ultimately are administered to a patient.
Eric Fullerton [00:04:08]:
Yes, absolutely. So of course all supply chains are important, but when we're dealing with pharmaceuticals, it certainly feels like there's more at stake, right? As you just spoke to, we're talking about the distribution of potentially life saving goods to people who truly need them. What impact does that have on your approach and are you measuring success differently?
Ammie McAsey [00:04:33]:
One of the sayings that we have in our organization is it's not a package, it's a patient. And while one of our remits is to drive an efficient supply chain, it's that patient at the end of every activity that we are doing, whether it's purchasing product, moving it through the distribution centers, picking an order, or delivering that product, that really is at the heart of who we are. I'd like to think it's our heartbeat is the patient. And ensuring the quality of the product Moving through the supply chain is really where we have to anchor our strategy. And it's just critically important as you think about life saving medications. And it's not always in that traditional order cycle. It's not order today, get tomorrow. It could be a phone call that we receive on a Saturday when we traditionally may not have a staff in the distribution center.
Ammie McAsey [00:05:22]:
And there is a person in every market that gets that phone call, goes to the distribution center, unlocks it, picks the order themselves, coordinates the transportation, then ensures that that product is delivered to whoever it needs to be delivered to by following up with a phone call confirming that that life saving medication was delivered. So to me, that's where I really get my energy too, because I know we Save lives for a living. But I also know that it's the team members every single day and night and every weekend where someone is taking that phone call and ensuring that order is picked, processed and delivered. That to me is where the weight really comes in of the importance of the supply chain that we run.
Eric Fullerton [00:06:02]:
Yeah. So there's certainly an additional added kind of high stakes and critical impact nature to it. Yet at the same time, there are a lot of very specific demands and requirements like we were just speaking about, whether it be speed, temp control, distribution models, evolving regulations. There's a lot of things that make moving pharmaceuticals unique. Can you talk about some of those and how do you navigate them?
Ammie McAsey [00:06:32]:
We navigate them traditionally in kind of a product category and majority of it is spelled out in regulations. But we tend to think of our most critical patient situation, and I mentioned oncology, but any situation where we're delivering into a provider clinic or a health system, we know that there's a patient sitting right there. And whether that's the temperature control that we have specific packouts that we need to ship in, or whether that's a DEA-regulated item where also has requirements. Those are two most highly regulated areas, whether it's DEA or FDA, but everything is regulated by the FDA. And so ensuring that we're compliant with all those regulations, whether it's how we ship, the time in which it takes to ship, or how products are stored within our distribution centers, I like to think it's not just one distribution center, but it's multiples. When you think about the environments that we need to have, the large refrigerators, we'll call them, we call them bio boxes, but then the cages for a certain class of DEA products and then a vault, like a bank vault for another class of DEA medications or DEA products. And so it's all of those nuances that go into moving the products through and really where our teams need to be specifically trained and then have the support functions also in my organization that support our teams when we have an inspection or when we are faced with a new product and specifically how to process it through the supply chain.
Eric Fullerton [00:08:05]:
Yeah. So when you think about measurement or KPIs, whether you're thinking about your own team performance or the broader org, Are there any things that are distinct about your ecosystem or how are you doing that type of measurement?
Ammie McAsey [00:08:22]:
Yeah, I would say supply chains have kind of their core metrics, right? We look at it on a cost per line, you know, an order quality perspective. That to me is one of the most important metrics is Our order quality, when our customers order each of the items that they are expecting to be delivered, we know there's a patient at the end of that again. And so order quality is really important. And even when you start subsetting the product categories, I look at prescription drugs with a higher level of accuracy than I may look at shampoo, because we ship shampoo and toothpaste. So those over the counters may not have the highest scrutiny. I still want the order to be accurate, but those prescription drugs, that's what I want to be as precision as possible.
Ammie McAsey [00:09:10]:
And we're human. Occasionally we're going to make a mistake, but that is what we measure to the nth degree. And that's part of our incentive program as well with our teams. And we use our Six Sigma methodology and our order accuracy goes out four decimal points, which I'm really proud of. But that's again because we're delivering life saving medications and we want to ensure that those orders are accurate. Not only are we measuring the accuracy of the orders, we're measuring the accuracy of the inventory in our buildings so that when customers do place place the order, we know that it's on the shelf and we can, we can fill that order. So an on time delivery is really the other one. But we have a ton of internal metrics, but we tend to start with the customer and work our way back to ensure that we have metrics that drive that customer experience.
Eric Fullerton [00:09:53]:
Yes, makes sense, makes sense. You know, you've had a long and successful career. 18 years at McKesson is obviously a long time. I'm sure there's multiple lessons you could probably share, but anything that comes to mind.
Ammie McAsey [00:10:06]:
The one that always comes to mind, and I get this question every now and then, is, you know, about leadership. And the lesson is about leading teams of all shapes and sizes. I've led small teams, 20 to 30 people. I've led teams of 600 people. My current organization is 6,000 people. But the one lesson that resonates with me every single time is taking care of the people and taking care of the teams. And someone once asked me when I was leading our largest DC, which was around 600 people, so how do you lead an organization this big? And my answer was one person at a time. The person who asked that question was like, how? And it's pretty simple, right? Put your feet on the floor and get out and work next to the team members or at least understand and appreciate and recognize all of the hard work that happens in the 24 hour span of the day.
Ammie McAsey [00:10:57]:
So to me, it's that leadership, that lesson around continuing to advocate for your people, to take care of your people, that's what's important to me, and it still influences how I lead today. The other thing maybe that I think about that's a lesson was originally I probably tried to solve problems all by myself. It's the first lesson of a leader is don't go it alone. But yet I tried. And I have learned over time, the 18 years that I've been here and the many years that came before being at McKesson, that putting a variety of perspectives around the problem, you will get the best solution. If you put a bunch of people that think like me around the problem, we are not going to come to the best solution. So differing viewpoints, leaving that empty chair for that customer that might not be in the room, but who you're solving the problem for, and to look over at that empty chair and say, if this was the customer, would they agree with how we're thinking about the problem? I really think it's about having different perspectives around the problem that solves it. And that was a big lesson for me, particularly as I grew in my leadership journey.
Eric Fullerton [00:12:04]:
Yeah, it's actually something I wanted to mention as well, because diverse talent is something that you've championed with different orgs and groups and things like this. Leading an organization of your size, you are very busy. So I guess the question is, why make that effort? I think I know the answer, but why make that effort to champion those types of causes? And what do you think the impact of that is downstream?
Ammie McAsey [00:12:31]:
So why make the effort, is it's just in my nature. It's in my nature to serve people. And when I'm long gone and retired, I want to hope that a conversation that I had with an individual or a leadership meeting that I attended and spoke at or a training initiative that I funded, those are the things that build the talent of tomorrow. And that investment that I can make is so small, but the multiplying effect is so big. I had the opportunity two weeks ago to speak with a small group that has part of their team in Ireland and part of their team in the U.S. the questions they asked were just around, how do you balance and how do you get excited? And I get excited because I love to watch people learn. I love to share what I know, but I also love to listen and hear how others are thinking about problems or opportunities. And so why I make the effort is because I get so much out of it.
Ammie McAsey [00:13:34]:
It's not selfish, but it's about watching others grow. And I love to watch the light bulb go off. That's one of my biggest sayings, is I love to share something, and all of a sudden I watch it click and the light bulb goes off in somebody's head, and I'm thinking, okay, I now made a difference as a leader, and yet I will probably get three times as much back from the conversation with that person. So I think it's my duty. I think it's my responsibility, but I also think it's just a little bit of who I am.
Eric Fullerton [00:14:00]:
Yeah, it's a great answer. I wanted to ask about something that I think every supply chain professional is sick of talking about. It's the elephant in the room, and we've been talking about it for years. But I think that when I was reading up on the work that McKesson had done and that you were focused on during COVID who was so interesting and impactful, it was so different than toilet paper on shelves. It's so critical to the life and livelihood of so many people. So can you just share a little bit of what that experience was like and what your focus as an org was during that time?
Ammie McAsey [00:14:44]:
Yes, and I will hit it from two perspectives, because we had to run two supply chains. We still had to keep the pharmaceutical supply chain running and then build out a portion of the supply chain that delivered COVID vaccines on behalf of the U.S. government. And the funny story, and everyone has their COVID story. It's kind of like, where were you when this happened? And my where were you was My leadership team was actually having a meeting in Dallas planning our national sales meeting, and we went out for dinner that night. And that was the night the NBA walked off the floor. And we all looked at each other and went, oh, dear, what is going on? And there were rumblings, and you were starting to read.
Ammie McAsey [00:15:25]:
So March 12, we all went back into the office and we broke into three groups. And our three groups were, get our people to come to work. You brainstorm how we're going to get our people to come to work. The next group was, how do we keep our people safe? And the third group was, how do we keep our supply chain running? And there wasn't a business continuity book built for this yet, but we brainstormed. And I wish I would have saved the flip charts because there were some really off the wall. We were renting school buses and ambulances and all of that. Little did we know, social distancing was the next thing that came out. But we really built out plans and everybody left at noon on March 12.
Ammie McAsey [00:16:05]:
By March 13, we were having conference calls with our distribution centers, telling them what they needed to do to prepare. And all of the work had to be done over the weekend so that by Sunday, when everyone walked in the door at night to work, we were providing the safest environment we could. And I'm so proud of the team in that regard. We never once lost a distribution center. And so we kept every distribution center running. At one point, we had 400 volunteers from across our company of all different functions, sales, finance, hr, that volunteered to come into our distribution centers and help process orders. So if you think about the impact a company can make and asking leaders and individuals across our company who had never strapped down an RF unit or spent six hours walking back and forth picking orders, there was never an open spot. When we asked for volunteers, our company just leaned in and said, I'm here, what do you need? Fast forward to the other side of the supply chain that we needed to build was around the vaccine distribution on behalf of the U.S. government due to a contract that we have with the CDC Vaccines for Children Program.
Ammie McAsey [00:17:19]:
And I was a part of that, but I didn't lead it. We stood up an entire leadership team that you were taken out of your day job and you were replaced. But there was an agreement that this was a full time job, and trust me, it was more than a full time job as we built out the supply chain. But what really transpired was because my organization in the pharmaceutical side, and then our medical surgical team, which is the other business unit, we all volunteered members of our leadership team. So we staffed this entire distribution network with members of our team, and then we hired a number of the frontline workers from outside of McKesson. But in the shortest amount of time, we stood up the distribution centers that then partnered with the manufacturers to distribute the COVID vaccines and then obviously partnered with the delivery carriers that delivered them. It was hours and hours and hours of work, and I'll call it the sweat equity in the tier equity. But I was in Mississippi when the first vaccine was packed and put on the delivery truck.
Ammie McAsey [00:18:37]:
And we had a news crew there. I was kind of in charge of the news crew with our PR team, but I was also there to celebrate with a team that had spent many, many months building out the processes and plans. And when that first package came out of the freezer and our supervisor who was responsible for that shift, walked it to the door of the truck that it was loaded on, there were members of the Team crying. Yeah, because of the pride that. And I'll get emotional about it too, but because of the pride that we took in supporting the initiative, that at that point we didn't know how big that initiative was even going to be. We just knew we were doing our part. And it was a small part, but it was an important part. And I look back on it and, you know, there were a lot of lessons learned.
Ammie McAsey [00:19:32]:
But I look back on it and given the information, we knew the time that we had to respond and the partnerships that we built across private and public sector. It was an amazing experience for us as a company and us as a company. We had a single focus that was what made it successful. There was one single focus to support the initiative and whatever resources we needed, our leadership team provided. So maybe that's a little bit of the story that many people didn't get a chance to see.
Eric Fullerton [00:20:04]:
I am really happy I asked that question. That was great. Before we closed out with kind of our quick hits, I did just want to ask about technology because it's something that you talked about earlier. As you know, it's still a people business, but the methods to achieve some of the outcomes are changing with technology. So when you think about that, what are some of the things that either have helped you or can help you or that you want and can see helping you more in the future on that tech side?
Ammie McAsey [00:20:34]:
Oh, the million dollar question, because everybody's talking about technology, I kind of break it into two things, is there's the automation and the robots. That's kind of in the umbrella of technology. And we've been using automation for some time in our distribution centers to drive efficiency and to drive accuracy. The advent of more of the software or the AI side of technology is really exciting. We're in that journey of AI and large language models. We've been through robotic processing to do some of those mundane tasks. But we're on a journey. And the interesting thing is we're making a lot of investments and so doing that in a very planful way around planning for inventory in pharmaceuticals, the value of inventory in our distribution centers would probably scare many people.
Ammie McAsey [00:21:29]:
And so efficiently using that inventory or efficiently managing that inventory is really important. But then also using all the indicators, buying indicators, or market intelligence that we can get our hands on to ensure that we're placing the inventory as close to the customer that's going to need it. So a lot of our energy right now is about driving inventory, efficiency and service. The other areas are around just knowing better how to plan Our labor in our distribution centers, we've done that for a long time. But the more information we get, the more buying patterns we can churn through and the language models do that, the better we can predict people and also give our front line that perspective of this is how much work we're going to have tonight. So you can plan when you're leaving in the morning, because our teams work overnight to deliver all those orders that came in by 8:00 to, you know, by noon the next morning. So there's a lot happening. I'm still cautiously optimistic about how we're going to leverage the technology.
Ammie McAsey [00:22:38]:
You can put a lot of data into a model, but if the model has a hallucination, I really don't want it having a hallucination when we're talking about life saving medication. So we still rely on the professionals that do our supply chain planning and that do our replenishment buying to make sure that whatever the models are indicating that we're doing that human check of it, it will eventually learn and be more and more precise. But I'm still optimistic and cautious with that optimism as we move forward into this AI age that is ultimately going to predict a lot more things than even what we're working on today.
Eric Fullerton [00:23:12]:
Yeah, absolutely. What I've heard from a lot of these types of conversations is similar to what you were talking about, which is around the concept of human assist, right? How can I analyze data faster? How can I get to answers quickly? How can I have things raised to me earlier and being able to still do the conducting of the activities, but using AI today to speed up some of that decisioning and that process and allowing people to make more decisions rather than do more analysis.
Ammie McAsey [00:23:45]:
Absolutely. I completely agree with how you've just said that in what I want our teams focused on is not the 80% of what's within couple decimal points. I want our teams focused on the 20% that has the outliers that you scratch your head and go, why is that showing up that way? And really focus on those areas, and that's what the AI can do or the large language models can do, is take the easy stuff off the screen and allow you to work on the stuff that really needs your attention. And that is going to require you to intervene where the other 80% can naturally run. And so our people are focused on the most important tasks instead of the tasks that truly are kind of rinse, repeat and run.
Eric Fullerton [00:24:32]:
Absolutely. Cool. So one of the things we often do on this podcast is we go with some quick Hits there at the end so you don't have to answer in one word. A sentence or two is totally fine. But I'm going to run through them and I'm curious to get your responses. Sound good?
Ammie McAsey [00:24:51]:
Sounds good.
Eric Fullerton [00:24:52]:
Awesome. Okay, so what is one thing that you wish everyone who worked in supply chain knew and the industry would be better for it?
Ammie McAsey [00:25:04]:
Okay. What I wish everyone knew is it's actually really hard. We make it look easy and I think the toilet paper crisis might have given new perspective. But there's a lot of hard working people that focus on delivering perfection every day. And so when something doesn't go perfect, have a little bit of grace.
Eric Fullerton [00:25:30]:
Absolutely. What is one trait that all of the best supply chain professionals seem to have?
Ammie McAsey [00:25:39]:
They have the ability to listen because taking information from every area that it's coming from, particularly when you serve large organizations, the ability to listen, digest the information and build action plans around it or build solutions. Supply chain leaders listen to everything. They have this really innate sense of knowing what's going on because sometimes they're hearing what people are saying. Other times they're walking through a distribution center and hearing a machine and saying something's not running right. So I think all supply chain leaders are great listeners.
Eric Fullerton [00:26:11]:
That's a good answer. I'm going to give you an opportunity to retire one overused buzzword in supply chain. You get to make the pick. No one can say it again. Which one would you pick?
Ammie McAsey [00:26:24]:
Innovate. Because I think that's just in our DNA. Every day we have to solve problems. So innovate is not a one time event. Innovate is every single day what we do. So I'd love to retire that one.
Eric Fullerton [00:26:37]:
I like it. I like it a lot. So supply chain trends. There's a lot going on in industry today. I'm curious your take on one that you think is overrated and then one that is underrated and a little bit about why.
Ammie McAsey [00:26:51]:
Yeah, maybe the I don't want to over rotate on AI, but it is the ultimate buzzword right now. And while it's going to augment a lot of the work that we do, it will never replace the work that we do. So I want to make sure that doesn't become the only thing that people talk about when they talk about supply chain. So that one might be the overused on the underused. I don't want to forget that a supply chain will never be without people. There will always be people. We cannot automate everything. And there's an importance of treating people right. That needs to continue to be a part of all supply chain professionals and how they think about building out solutions.
Eric Fullerton [00:27:35]:
Okay, last one Hot take on the supply chain industry today. We are a podcast, so we like hot takes. Maybe something that some folks might not agree with that you believe really strongly. What's your hot take on supply chain today?
Ammie McAsey [00:27:51]:
Yeah, my hot take continues to be that supply chain is the place to be. We can drive the overall performance of a company, whether it's through our inventory. We can drive the customer experience and we typically have one of the largest employee populations in a company, so we can drive the culture. So in my mind, supply chain in general is just a hot department to be in in one of the greatest areas to be in, you know, in a career or in a company.
Eric Fullerton [00:28:19]:
Ammie, thank you very much for taking some time with us, sharing your experience, some great stories and perspective. Most of all, thank you for being a supply chain champion.
Ammie McAsey [00:28:29]:
Thank you, Eric. It's been a pleasure.
Eric Fullerton [00:28:34]:
Thank you for listening to Supply Chain Champions. To get connected and learn more, visit project44.com and click the link in the comments to subscribe to project44's newsletter. Tune in, get smart, and move forward.