Setting PPE Par Levels So Your Unit Never Runs Short Again

Everyone who worked a floor in 2020 remembers what running out of masks felt like. Par levels are the boring operational fix that makes sure it never happens to your unit again — and they’re not complicated once you build them right.

A par level is the minimum stock that triggers a reorder. Set it too low and you’re always one bad week from empty; set it on last quarter’s calm and a surge wipes you out. The right par is real burn rate plus a surge buffer plus your supplier’s lead time.

The second half of resilience is vendor redundancy. A single supplier’s outage shouldn’t become your outage, so vet at least two vendors per critical item. We learned this moving meals — redundancy in the chain is the only thing that survives a crisis.

Build the par sheet, name the backup vendors, and put the reorder trigger on someone’s actual job — not “when we notice.” That’s the whole system, and it’s the difference between never running short and learning the 2020 lesson twice.

For the full breakdown, read our Frontline Provisioning Program — it goes deeper than we can here.