Completed WMS projects
Celesio AG
WMS-Scan
Branch
- Pharmaceutical industry
- Wholesale industry
The team warehouse logistics was asked by the company Celesio AG (Celesio) to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of its current and potential WMS. Celesio is one of Europe’s leading pharmaceutical suppliers with headquarters in Stuttgart. It markets its products in 15 different countries. With its three sections wholesale trade, drugstores and services it covers the complete range of the pharmaceutical trade and services.
Reason and goal
Celesio operates several WMS throughout Europe. In order to ensure a consistent IT environment and to create a differentiated performance the functions of the used WMS should be compared and analysed and optimzation potentials should be identified. This study should also consider other WMS on the market which are especially suitable for the pharmaceutical industry to point out the weaknesses and strenght of the used WMS and to allow for the objective evaluation of the current functions.
The goal of this project was to record and document the performance of the current as well as of potential WMS under consideration of momentary and future requirements of Celesio’s pharmaceutical wholesale trade.
Initial situation
The analysis of the weaknesses and strengths was based on the International Market Survey Warehouse Management Systems and its catalogue containing about 4,000 questions. The WMS can be compared by means of the database which holds information about the functionality of marketable WMS. The result of the comparison depends on the respective requirement profile.
Requirement profile and analysis of weaknesses and strengths
During a workshop a requirement profile was developed to specify the functional requirements for the pharmaceutical wholesale trade. For this purpose, all relevant single aspects of the question catalogue were evaluated with regard to their relevance. The following evaluation provided the data for the functional comparison of the WMS used by Celesio and potential WMS. In the scope of the analysis of weaknesses and strengths the data were processed, densified and visualized. By highlighting the relevant information results can be achieved much quicker and serve as basis for further decisions.
Result
The analysis of weaknesses and strengths allows for the objective evaluation of the performance of the used WMS under consideration of all relevant systems currently on the market. This helps to make a decision regarding the design of the IT environment for the WMS:
- Retention of the current configuration
- Homogenization of the IT environment by reducing the number of existing WMS
