Unipart: Transforming Healthcare & the Supply Chain

Unipart is a provider of supply chain solutions and performance improvement technologies, with a wide portfolio of customers across seven market sectors: automotive, rail and public transport, aerospace and defence, technology, e-commerce, consumer, retail and industrials and healthcare.

Unipart is a British company with a global reach, headquartered in Oxford with a team of more than 12,000 supporting customers in 20 international markets. The Unipart brand was founded in 1974, as a division of British Leyland. Unipart became an employee-owned company after a management buyout in 1987 and remains one of Britain’s biggest private companies. 

Unipart is the supply chain transformation partner of choice for the healthcare sector, where it has one goal: To deliver better health outcomes, from building resilient supply chain solutions to prioritising the needs of clinicians, patients and service users first.

The Unipart Way: equipping staff with the skills they need to diagnose problems 

Unipart has partnered with the NHS, through The Unipart Way. Refined over a period of 30 years, The Unipart Way is billed as a designed system which engages every single employee within the company. In addition to motivating members of the workforce, it’s aimed at equipping them with the skills to diagnose problems and create innovative solutions that will make a dramatic difference. 

When one major NHS Trust needed to transform its culture whilst still delivering the highest quality of patient care, it was Unipart Consultancy that the Trust contacted. 

Unipart completed a diagnostic assessment of the Trust, involving 350 employees at all levels of the organisation. Unipart Consultancy then listed priority points, including:  

• The transfer of skills and capabilities to Trust employees
• Leadership development and management skills training
• End-to-end patient pathway optimisation
• Redesign and implementation of a new organisation structure.

After implementing the continuous improvement culture, the Trust listed the following benefits:

• £2m reduction in operating costs as a result of reduced lengths of patient stay, increased theatre utilisation
• £1.5m reduction in payroll cost, as a result of reduced need for temporary staff
• 27% reduction in length of patient stay 
• Patient satisfaction increase to 94% 
• Improved absentee rates

Unipart: 50 years as a supply chain solutions leader 

Our sister title Supply Chain Digital interviewed Unipart’s CEO Darren Leigh for our October magazine. He shared how Unipart has overcome obstacles, such as Brexit, COVID-19, the Suez Canal blockage, semiconductor supply issues and the conflict in Ukraine. Fortunately, Unipart has a history of reinvention, with the ability to change and evolve an important part of its DNA. 

“We’ve had to adapt and respond to all of these challenges,” Darren told us. “What we’ve done is evolved our own supply chain and operating model. We’re now far more integrated and collaborative across the group, rather than working in silos. 

“We've evolved to offer a much broader, more aligned portfolio of products, services and solutions to help develop more efficient, resilient and sustainable supply chains for our customers. I'd also say we're much leaner and financially stronger than we have been for a long time.”

Read the full interview here.

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