Rossib Pharmatsia

Pre-Deployment State (Background Information)

Rossib Pharmatsia of the ROSTA group is the largest pharmaceutical supplies distributor in Russia. The range of pharmaceutical enterprises that distribute their products through Rossib Pharmatsia includes 639 companies across 44 countries. The number of purchasers serviced by Rossib Pharmatsia is over nine thousand and increasing with each year. Requests from customers are received via the Novosibirsk and Moscow offices as well as via 23 branch offices and 16 regional representative offices.

The warehouse in Podolsk (located in the Moscow region) is located in a single building. The warehouse has three storage zones with different temperature modes: +15 to +22 °С, +12 to +15 °С, and +2 to +8 °С. The long-term storage zone is equipped with 6-tier racks. The item pickup zone is equipped with a conveyor unit. In this zone, gravitational racks are used to store most of the goods, while shelf racks are used to store low-velocity goods and frozen goods. The forwarding zone is divided into two zones: for wholesale orders and for retail orders. Shipping is done right to the loading docks. The warehouse has a special zone dedicated to narcotics and potent medicines. It includes the following areas: acceptance, long-term storage, forwarding, and shipment. As a result, the entire goods turnover cycle is run within the single zone. With its huge variety of goods, the pharmaceutical warehouse requires a special approach to storage conditions.

The main requirements for pharmaceutical warehouses include whether the following parameters can be followed while processing goods: terms and storage conditions, certificate management, quality control, acceptance sampling, weight checks, serial number checks, condition control (for temperature, humidity, keeping time, selling time, etc.), high accuracy and high rate of order assembly, additional control for specific goods (e.g., narcotics and potent medicines), and others.

The administration of Rossib Pharmatsia set the task to comprehensively automate the warehouse based on a system aimed at managing all technological operations, including personnel and warehouse equipment. The main task of the system was to be able to assemble a large volume of retail orders with high precision.

 In addition, other tasks were to be achieved, such as:

• Improving the performance of personnel and increasing the handling capacity of the warehouse by 30–50 %. 
• Speeding up the order compilation process by introducing storage position tracking and by minimizing the time of performing tasks.
• Reducing the time of manual data input and document editing. Speeding up the order shipment process by reducing the order inspection and recounting times prior to shipping.
• Motivating personnel to improve performance by tracking individual work time and tasks.
• Providing a tool for billing third parties for secure storage and handling services.
• Providing accurate management of quality assurance documentation for goods, such as certificates, veterinary notes, etc. 

Solution

"We conducted a thorough study of the market as long ago as 2001 when we sought for a management system for our Novosibirsk warehouse," said Vakhtang Patkhvaria, ROSTA Podolsk branch director. "In fact, the pharmacy industry solution offered by SOLVO appeared to be the only one capable of meeting all our requirements. The reliability of the system and its field experience make this solution one of the best management systems for pharmacy warehouses on the Russian market. As a result, all technology operations at the Rossib Pharmatsia warehouses are now managed by the use of Solvo.WMS. Solvo.WMS has been extensively employed at the Novosibirsk warehouse since September 2002  and at the Podolsk warehouse since April 2006. 

Deployment Project Details

Solvo.WMS is designed to automate warehouse technology and business processes related to the handling of goods at any phase: from the moment of the information about expected goods is received to the moment of shipping to customers. Information regarding the documents set accompanying the batch of goods and the required set of certificates is sent to Solvo.WMS. Different strategies of handling situations, when the required documents or certificates are missing, can be applied to different goods and suppliers. These strategies can be specified through the trading system used by the company to send goods delivery notifications. These notifications can contain specifics on how to handle the situation. All warehouse workers, including administrators, managers, operators, etc., received training for using the system.

Results

"Sоlvo.WMS is currently used to manage all technological processes at our warehouses," said Vakhtang Patkhvaria. "As a result, managers of various warehouse departments reduced their time cost for routine operations, such as assigning and sending tasks, supervising personnel, etc., and gained more time for carrying out higher-level administrative tasks, such as operative control of the warehouse, optimal utilization of available technical and human resources, etc. The deployment of Solvo.WMS allowed us to efficiently manage our narrow-rack warehouse, to effectively control the conveyor unit, and to quickly compile orders."