Completed WMS projects

Solvo Ltd.

Natali Pharm Success Story: You Order Today And We Fulfill It The Same Day

Customers

Natali Pharm

Completion

31.10.2010

Country

Armenia

Branch

• Pharmaceutical industry

Description

Task description

Successfully implemented in 2010, the project for upgrading a pharmaceutics warehouse located in Yerevan, Armenia, was based on Solvo.WMS, a complex automation solution provided by SOLVO, the Russian leading provider of high-end systems for real-time logistics control and automation at warehouses and container terminals. The Solvo.WMS warehouse management system has been widely used in the pharmacy industry to automate technology processes, significantly improve performance and efficiently control safety stocks of drugs and medical products. Of prime importance is the ability of Solvo.WMS to optimize the warehouse operation so as to strictly meet expiration dates and storage conditions for drugs, and to quickly assemble and deliver orders made by drugstores and hospitals. Combined with the Schaefer A-Frame high-performance order-assembly automation conveyor, the solution ideally meets the needs of a modern pharmacy company.

Project Goals
• Achieve maximum personnel performance and warehouse operation efficiency
• Speed up the assembly of drug supply orders
• Minimize errors in the order assembly process

Headquartered in Yerevan, Armenia, Natali Pharm is the largest Armenian supplier of pharmaceutical products, medical goods, children food, medical equipment and other products for clinics and hospitals. Natali Pharm is an authorized distributor of more than 40 world-known manufacturers of high-quality drugs, including Unipharm. Inc., Servier, Novartis Pharma, Fresh Up, Nycomed, Roche, Krewel Meuselbach, Hipp, Nike, NizhPharm, KievMedPreparat, etc. Natali Pharm's own distribution network includes over 30 drugstores. Having a large customer base, Natali Pharm is dealing with most of medical institutions in Armenia, providing them with drugs.

Natali Pharm's warehouse complex, located in Yerevan, is a standalone two-story building that is used to store goods and to assemble and ship orders. Natali Pharm decided to upgrade and automate this warehouse so as to improve its performance, optimize technology processes, ensure an efficient control over drug reserves, and reduce efforts on order servicing and drug shipment. A reconnaissance examination revealed that the warehouse was operated in a fairly inefficient way. For example, it occupied only a part of the building—the first floor of the two-storied building—while the storage room was rather limited, resulting in an acute shortage of space. No piece-picking zone was available. Insufficient lighting hindered manipulations with goods and led to errors. The warehouse's topology made it impossible to freely use machinery equipment for loading/unloading operations. So, to implement the automation of logistic processes at the warehouse, a comprehensive modernization of the outdated warehouse was needed. For example, it was necessary to extend the storage space, to separate the piece-picking zone from the box and pallet zone, to increase the intensity of goods handling, and to optimize the order assembly process for getting more free space.

In terms of the efficiency of the new warehouse, Natali Pharm's main requirement was to achieve maximum accuracy and performance in receiving, storing, picking, assembling and delivering a large number of retail and wholesale orders for the entire range of offered products. It should be noted that Natali Pharm's customer base was quite large and included not only its own drugstore network, but also many other third-party medical-profile institutions and enterprises (both commercial and patient caring). So the main challenge of this upgrading project was to ensure a customer service level that could really meet the motto "you order today and we fulfill your order the same day."

A few different vendors took part in the project. Lubandy Logistic Services provided consulting services and carried out the design of the entire project for the required logistics scheme and equipment. In doing this, Lubandy held a tender that helped choose SSI Schaefer PEEM to supply required warehouse equipment. To renovate the warehouse, the following upgrades were suggested: to repair the building, to carry out floor pouring, to engage the second floor of the building, as well as equip the warehouse with the following equipment: a conveyor line, the Schaefer A-Frame automation unit, and different types of cargo loading devices, such as gravity-flow, pallet, and shelf racks, tote boxes, etc.

To choose a right warehouse management system, Natali Pharm announced a tender to implement an integrated automation solution on their warehouse. SOLVO took part in the tender and eventually won it. The key advantage that enabled SOLVO to win the tender consisted in their extensive experience in implementing effort-consuming and large-scale projects for introducing management systems and integrating different types of equipment at warehouses. For example, SOLVO had had experience in integrating Schaefer equipment on several projects in Russia and Ukraine. In addition, SOLVO had gained ample experience in working with pharmacy industry customers, such as Donbass Pharmacy Company, Rossib Pharmacy, ROSTA Pharmaceutic Group, Biotek Group, Falbi, etc..

In 2010, Natali Pharm and SOLVO concluded a contract for the deployment of Solvo.WMS automation system. Solvo.WMS is a comprehensive real-time solution designed to automate warehouses of any complexity. Solvo.WMS is a quickly installable and easily configurable system primarily aimed at improving the efficiency of warehouse operations and enhancing the performance of warehouse staff and equipment.

The project took six months to develop a design project, to configure the solution to the customer's requirements (including the integration with conveyor equipment) and then to deploy Solvo.WMS. The final phase—deployment—was most critical and took two and a half months, including the launch of the system into operation together with the entire complex of warehouse equipment. Before starting the work, two deployment concepts were considered: incremental and complex. The customer finally made a decision to carry out a comprehensive modernization of their warehouse using just the complex approach, despite the fact that this choice entailed certain costs due to the need to make a two-day stop of the warehouse operation to perform a large amount of preparatory works. Before deploying the system, ABC analysis was done to categorize goods and cargoes circulating at the warehouse. Additionally, for most efficiency, stock inventory counting was done at the same time as goods were physically moved from the box and pallet pickup zone located at the first floor to the piece pickup zone located at the second floor. To ensure intersystem integration, SOLVO implemented and introduced software gateways to the Schaefer conveyor system and Schaefer A-Frame order compilation system, as well as to the 1С ERP. In addition, a coordinated plan for remote intersystem testing was agreed upon between all vendors, including different types of tests, such as load, bandwidth, order simulation, technology processes, etc. This preparatory phase continued for two weeks.

Schaefer A-Frame is a fully automatic picking system ideally fitting with pharmaceutics industry needs. This technology can commission multiple personalized orders based on a wide range of medicament categories. The most important advantage of A-Frame is its fantastic performance that helps you guarantee that drug orders can be delivered to buyers and patients within the shortest possible time, i.e., at the same day or even within an hour or two. As a result, the technology works to the benefit of customers by removing the need for a hospital or drugstore to make large local reserves of medicaments, which mostly have limited expiration dates and require specific temperature and other storage conditions that not every sales and medicinal institution can properly ensure. The performance of Schaefer A-Frame can reach a processing speed of more than 7,000 items per hour and 23 orders per minute..

After the initial installation of Solvo.WMS was done, the next phase was to carry out the deployment of warehouse equipment, and the testing of the Solvo.WMS installation and the intersystem gateways. This phase required three months, lasting from July to September 2010, and finally resulted in the launch of the entire system and putting it into commercial operation.

In addition, SOLVO specialists provided consulting services and performed the testing of the integration between all hardware systems. They also conducted an analysis of the Motorola-based radio network covering a number of Datalogic Skorpio radio devices, and prepared recommendations for optimizing its configuration.

At the final phase of the project, SOLVO offered a full training course to enable warehouse workers, operators and managers to quickly learn how to use the system with maximum efficiency and minimum efforts and costs. In this way, the project for a comprehensive automation of Natali Pharm's pharmaceutical warehouse was completed in the shortest time. As a result, the warehouse can rightly be called the most technologically advanced one existing today in Armenia.

About SOLVO
Founded in 1995, SOLVO Ltd. is the leading Russian provider of high-end real-time logistics automation and control systems for business and technology processes at warehouses and container terminals. SOLVO provides its customers with services required to keep business and technology processes efficient and cost effective.

About SSI Schaefer PEEM
SSI Schaefer Peem is one of the world's leading specialists for economic, total solutions for warehousing, materials handling, and order-picking technology. The company's main focus lies in the production of conveying systems and automatic picking systems including applicable software. In September 2001, the company was integrated into the international SSI Schaefer group.

About Lubandy Logistic Services
Lubandy Logistic Services is a consulting company founded in 2008 in Austria. It provides services to establish optimal conditions for the logistics planning process. For example, they help customers select the optimal size of buildings and infrastructure solutions with a balance of cost and effectiveness, to choose suppliers of equipment and automation systems, implement system integration and launch projects, etc.

Source: www.solvo.ru/en/customers/success_stories/natali_pharm.php

Project duration

6 months

System components

Warehouse Specifications
• Storage Area: 2000 sq. m
• Storage Types: Pallet, Box, and Piece
• Number of Storage Units: 6 thousand SKUs
• Orders per Day: 500 (up to 15000 lines)
• Usage of Equipment and Machinery:
o Schaefer Conveyor Line, and A-Frame Automated System
o Gravitation and Shelf Racks
• Solvo.WMS Document Management System
• Radio Equipment:
o Datalogic Skorpio Devices
o Motorola Equipment for Radio Infrastructure Network

Software requirements

Solvo.WMS

Contact person