Hospital System Achieves Close to a 98% Fill Rate of Daily Orders with Horizontal Carousels
Hospital System Achieves Close to a 98% Fill Rate of Daily Orders with Horizontal Carousels
Challenge
Challenge
A highly respected hospital system known for its historical dedication to selfless medical care becomes one of the first in the country to consolidate its storage operations. Their facility required extensive storage space for medical supplies while also serving as a sterile processing facility for all surgical instrumentation. With more than 5,000 employees operating across 4 award-winning hospitals, the company wanted to centralize its operations to one offsite location that could service these multiple hospital sites.
Solution
Solution
Storage and Distribution Systems (SDS), a sales representative group for White Systems out of Columbia, MD, was involved in the project from its inception. They evaluated the existing operations of the hospital system and with the help of White, were able to design a horizontal carousel system that was best suited for their application. “We provided total project management for the storage and material handling side of the project,” said Andy Pribulka, account manager for SDS.
The Spectrum Plus software is a flexible and scalable warehouse control application that can be used to perform all tasks associated with carousel bulk storage management such as picking, stocking, counting, and inventory tracking.
It runs on the latest Microsoft Windows™ operating systems, and features a Microsoft SQL database as the heart of the system. Spectrum Plus is designed to eliminate the paperwork normally found in non-automated warehouse systems and is a perfect fit for this hospital system’s installation. Their operators need only to pick or store items as directed by the system. When an operator confirms that a task has been completed, Spectrum Plus’ positive acknowledgement feature reports the activity to the host, keeping the valuable inventory information up to date with clear visibility.
Results
Results
With a one million dollar inventory, the facility became 100% automated through the installation of White Intelligent Storage horizontal carousel Systems in conjunction with the Lawson MM IS system. The system has the ability to accommodate four hospitals with approximately 1000 bed capacities. It has truly allowed us to dispense product in the lowest units of measure in a JIT environment,” says a company representative.
The system had the capacity to store and maintain over 2500 sku’s, which insured flexibility and scalability for future operations. In addition to the space savings, the White carousel systems also offered secured protection of supplies, increased organization, improved inventory accuracy and control, and improved picking productivity.
