Medline Innovation Awards

Medline’s annual Innovation Awards recognize the phenomenal achievement and innovation driven across our Product Division Teams.

Consisting of seven categories, these awards celebrate Medline employees who are continuously fueling our pipeline of innovation.

Best Cost Savings

As depleting excess component inventory became a key goal for Division 20, it also became evident that Floor Grade instrument SKUs were a key piece to reducing this volume and cost, over $2 million of it to be precise. The team physically reviewed 800 different components within this Legacy Medline product line. After realizing the amount of duplicate items, the team completed a large scale consolidation that resulted in a 50% SKU reduction and nearly $600,000 in AGM savings. Additionally, the project mitigated large scrap volumes, created a more focused product offering, and improved vendor performance, forecasts, and lead times.

Winner Dynacor: Floor Grade Instrument Consolidation

Best New Product

Significant price increases and lack of brand autonomy with multilayer compression provided an opportunity to introduce an innovative new product. The team traveled in the field to solicit clinician and patient feedback to develop a new product that solves the compression market needs. As a result, AccuWrap was launched to improve patient outcomes, accuracy in application, sourcing costs, and brand autonomy. AccuWrap supports nursing competency while promoting patient adherence through comfort, which leads to improved outcomes and positions Medline as an innovator in compression therapy.

Winner

Advanced Wound Care: AccuWrap 2 Layer Compression System

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See our other winners on pages 16-17

Best Product Improvement

Our improved Hudson RCI Voldyne Incentive Spirometer uses 33% less resin, reducing our carbon footprint and ultimately increasing our overall cost savings. The product also introduced more customerfriendly advances, such as expandable tubing with a swivel mouthpiece for easy storage and use anywhere, a bright, colorful Instructions for Use for easy learning, and the use of a smiley face illustration to demonstrate proper use. These enhancements resulted in a more than 75% decrease in customer complaints on visual imperfection (cracks, scratches, etc.).

Winner Respiratory: Hudson RCI Voldyne Incentive Spirometer

Best Product Launch

Having worked tirelessly to establish Medline as a legitimate player in the orthopedic Foot & Ankle implant market over the past 10 years, and with a core portfolio of traditional plating and screw systems, the UNITE team set its sights on differentiating itself through innovation. The team has spent the past three years developing game-changing, innovative nitinol implants to create long-term growth opportunity.

Winner

Orthopedics: REFLEX® Nitinol Implant System

Best ONE MEDLINE

The ReNewal and Repositioning & Offloading divisions collaborated to develop a dashboard to track customer collection compliance of the Comfort Glide Lateral Transfer Blended SKU portfolio of products. Customer collections are a key metric to the health of any reprocessing program, and this tool has allowed us to increase our collection to buyback rates from 25% to 66% on a product category that has grown to $16 million within the short span of four years.

Winner

Renewal + Repositioning & Offloading: Comfort Glide Blended SKU Compliance Dashboard

Innovate with Agility

In the aftermath of the pandemic, the Textile Division had an extreme surplus of raw material for reusable isolation gowns. The team needed to come up with a solution to use the raw material to avoid offloading the material at significant loss. The division implemented a creative plan to use the fabric for a different application, making wipeable pillows out of the excess fabric. The end product is a profitable addition to the line with exponential sales success.

Textiles: Surplus Fabric Consumption w/ EverLuxe Pillows

Insight to Action

In 2020, the Advanced Skin Care team began to receive numerous customer inquiries for skin and hair care products that meet the needs of a diverse patient population. The team learned that the majority of competitor products today feature ingredients that are not suitable for this purpose. The division created an evidence-based response to show how Remedy products are suitable and then collaborated with Medline’s Black Employee Network (BEN) on customer messaging. The strategy has led to additional new product launches to help expand this growing market.

Winner Advanced Skin Care: Remedy Diversity & Inclusion Initiative