Smith Drug Company Pharmaceutical distribution
Time-saving and accuracy benefits
Initially, Smith Drug maintained its paper- based system side-by-side its Voice-directed distribution regime. After a short time, however, the company made the transition to Voice alone as that is how it wanted to work in order to maximise the time-saving and accuracy benefits the Vocollect system afforded. At Smith Drug, Voice facilitates the coordination of assignments and exceptions
“ Errors in picking pharmaceuticals
are very expensive, running anywhere from a dollar or two up to $10,000, and the profit margin for a DC is razor-thin. It doesn’t take too many $10,000 bottles lost to eat up profits.”
and includes an interface through VoiceLink to Smith Drug’s iSeries ERP system (Previously, Voice was interfaced through VoiceLink to the company’s mainframe). The assignments are converted into speech, and are then relayed to the workers via Vocollect SR headsets equipped with microphones.
Most of the company’s picking is done during the evening shift because, after the stores close at night, they phone their orders through to Smith Drug and this information is then automatically relayed to VoiceLink from the iSeries ERP system. “Each member of our Voice team is assigned to a particular area and, when they sign onto the system, it tells them where and what to pick,” explained McConnell.
Mainframe swap-out
Smith Drug swapped-out its legacy mainframe system for the iSeries ERP during 2009 and 2010, as McConnell explains “During the swap-out process we were aware that IBM also offered its iWMS system and that this was able to interface and provide similar functionality to our existing VoiceLink software. However, even though we had moved to a new IBM ERP system I still chose to keep VoiceLink in our South Carolina and Arkansas DCs because it was working so well for us.”
The iSeries ERP system first went live in late 2009 in the Georgia DC, which at the time was a new site for Smith Drug that was being built from scratch. “We went live here first because no one at that location was used to using a mainframe or ERP system and everyone was just starting out,” McConnell pointed out. He also explained that Smith Drug installed Schaefer automated picking and carousel systems in this warehouse at the same time as the IT infrastructure installation. “We can now interface with some of the automation processes in this warehouse,” he said. “However, we still needed a Voice system at this location. The software for the automation systems does the cubing for what
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MANUFACTURING &LOGISTICS
IT October 2011
www.logisticsit.com
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