Pharmaceutical Distributor Cuts Day Of Safety Stock

Canada's Medis increases shipping productivity and inventory control accuracy with barcode-based automated warehouse

Scattered across Canada from St. Johns, Newfoundland, on the east coast to Vancouver, BC, on the west coast are 14 warehouses for Medis Health & Pharmaceutical Services, Inc., Canada’s leading pharmaceutical distributor. Until last year, warehouse tracking of the pharmaceutical and related items it shipped across the nation was primarily a manual chore. However, over an 18-month period, each warehouse is now being converted to an electronic tracking program. By the time all 14 are automated, Medis expects to eliminate a whole day of safety stock.

"With a $4 billion company, that is a lot of stock," says Martin Losier, vice president, information technology and CIO at Medis. "We have close to 30,000 SKUs, so efficiency and accuracy are important."

Medis is a wholly owned subsidiary of McKesson HBOC and Canada's largest distributor of pharmaceutical, health and beauty aides with headquarters in Montreal. Its warehouses ship products to Canadian pharmacies, hospitals and healthcare institutions.

"We must manage all inventory movement properly to service our customers efficiently and quickly. We have to make sure we can track all goods and quantities from when we receive them in the warehouse to when we ship them to the customer," says Losier. With warehouses ranging in size from 50,000 square feet to 200,000 square feet, that is a challenge.

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