NHS team wins Mark in Action award after creating Best Practice Forum

Jason Barden, Lee Burns, and Patryk Ullrich in the NHS Supply Chain Maidstone team won a prestigious Mark in Action award in the August ceremony earlier this year after creating a Best Practice Forum.

During the lockdown period of 2020 - 2021, Shift Operations Manager Patryk Ullrich and Warehouse Shift Manager Jason Barden identified the opportunity to start the Best Practice Forum to share potential opportunities with the rest of the network, which has created an estimated saving of £150K so far.

As part of their delivery of The Unipart Way, they began with the method for purchasing merchandise for reward and recognition, looking at the bulk-buying opportunities across the seven sites. Lee Burns, Unipart Way Programme Manager, joined forces with them to work on the opportunity to expand this method across the network in a more formalised process.

Watch Russel Hayes in the video below explain the reasons for his nomination.

Patryk Ullrich said: “The whole idea of this project was to bring all depots together as a whole NHS network to work together so we could learn from each other and find the best solutions towards the problems and issues, and deal with them as a team.

“Taking into account the wealth of experience and knowledge throughout the company/network it became obvious to us that something must be done to bring it all together and make it easily accessible, to create a united Unipart/NHS community and work together rather than separately.”

Patryk, Jason and Lee developed a Best Practice Charter which has resulted in a robust ideas and problem sharing forum that makes it easy to bring forward ideas and processes which all member depots then vote on and adopt as required.

The financial benefits of initiatives implemented through the Best Practice Charter have been tracked and it is estimated there has been a saving of £150K so far, but this is just a part of overall benefits of the process.

“I really appreciate the fact that we were, as a team, recognised. It was an incredible feeling that someone noticed our effort and our input in the network and it was a great experience to meet John Neill,” Patryk said, after receiving the award at the Mark in Action ceremony.

Lee Burns added: “It's always nice to get recognition from your peers or people within. It’s amazing to know that others think that what you've done is worthy of being put forward for something like this.”

The full Mark in Action ceremony from August 2023 is available to watch with this video link.

To nominate a Unipart employee or team for a Mark in Action award click here.