Strategies for the Preservation of Service Levels in the Inventory Management During COVID-19: A Case Study in a Company of Biosafety Products

The current global situation due to the COVID-19 pandemic has seriously impacted the ability of supply chains to achieve the availability of essential biosafety products in a timely and reliable manner. The companies producing biosafety products have experienced an unforeseen change in the demand for products, due to the international protocols of health organizations on the use of these types of products to mitigate the spread of the virus. For companies involved in these supply chains, the priority is to maintain adequate service levels in the current scenario, guaranteeing high availability at each link in order to help preserve life. This requires maintaining the articulation and flexibility of the processes in the supply chain, reflected in decision making. Despite the relevance of the problem, studies on multi-product inventory business strategies and their impact on service level and volatile demand during a pandemic are limited. This article shows the experience of a Colombian biosafety products company, which, focused on fulfilling its mission, guaranteeing customer and user satisfaction, developed strategies that made its management model of inventories management more flexible. The contribution of this proposal leads to some important knowledge that may be of interest for the management of inventories in biosafety companies that manage multiple products of great demand, volatile behavior and of high importance, which impacts on the containment of the spread of the virus in a global disruption of supply chains. The proposed strategies can be generalized to other types of companies that present similar situations.