title: [The supply chain is everybody's business...].
abstract: The management of the supply chain is a matter of delicate balance. This is certainly due to its position at the crossroads between suppliers and users requirements, as well as logistic, financial and technical regulations. For a public organisation like EFS, whose annual budget amounts to 697 million euros, there is a lot at stake: supplies represent the second most important item of its budget accounting for 38% of annual expenses. Three quarters of the purchases concern basic activities such as blood collection, testing procedures, transformation and distribution of blood products. The last quarter is spent on more general activities (computer systems, telecommunications...). Professionalisation of the purchasing function has grown since the creation of the government-owned organisation as a single national unit (EFS) in the year 2000. Its consequences can be felt especially in the field of the "core activities". The current stage consists in maintaining close links between all the skills necessary to a high-quality supply chain. The latter will undoubtedly be beneficial to the medical, technical and support departments of EFS, which are the in-house customers to satisfy.
authors.affiliation: 20 avenue du Stade-de-France, 93218 La Plaine-Saint-Denis, France. antoine.coulondre@efs.sante.fr
authors.forename: Antoine
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Coulondre
mesh_terms: D001782:Blood Donors / Q000706:statistics & numerical data* / Q000600:supply & distribution*; D001803:Blood Transfusion / Q000191:economics*; D017281:Cost of Illness; D005602:France; D006801:Humans