Norsk Medisinaldepot Looks to Streamline Warehouse Operations

Norwegian pharma distributor seeks to improve high-volume order fulfillment, raise quality of customer service

Norwegian pharma distributor seeks to improve high-volume order fulfillment, raise quality of customer service

Stockholm — September 13, 2004 — Norwegian distributor Norsk Medisinaldepot (NMD) has licensed warehouse management solution (WMS) from Industri-Matematik International (IMI) to manage and streamline the company's warehouse operations throughout the country.

Headquartered in Oslo, NMD is Norway's largest wholesale distributor of drugs and hospital supplies. Founded in 1957, the company provides pharmacies and hospitals with a product line in both drug and hospital supplies.

As the leading drug distributor, warehousing is a mission-critical business process for NMD. Norwegian law requires that pharmaceutical wholesalers must carry all approved drugs and have the ability to deliver prescription and non-prescription products within 24 hours to any pharmacy in the country.

NMD has licensed IMI Warehouse 4.1 software for all warehouse operations in Norway. The company will deploy the IMI Supply Chain Execution software throughout its central warehouse and distribution centers, replacing its current warehouse system to increase efficiency of shipment and delivery.

IMI Warehouse functionality includes capabilities to manage transport routes and link warehouse operations to departure schedules; support for recycling materials by controlling packing materials and deposits received from vendors and other warehouses; support of advance shipping notices (ASNs) with detailed shipment-level information and content specifications per unique container; and radio frequency (RF) client with applications for automatic receiving based on purchase order or ASN information, interleaved movement, inventory audit and real-time picking tasks.

With the new advanced supply chain execution capabilities made possible by the IMI solution, NMD plans to shift its logistic model to a centralized distribution model with minimum handling of goods and maximum order throughput.

"IMI Warehouse will enable us to implement best practices that will streamline delivery performance across the entire supply chain while balancing stock levels and product availability with costs and customer responsiveness," said Egil Eide, vice president of logistics at NMD. "IMI Warehouse provides advance ship notices and cross-dock capabilities that will help us to reduce picking errors and ensure accurate deliveries."

The partnership with IMI started back in 1995 when NMD implemented IMI Order software as its IT backbone for the company's entire supply chain operations. In 2002, IMI Replenishment was added to optimize NMD's demand replenishment capacities and enhance customer service.

IMI said its supply chain suite provides solutions for increased flexibility, responsiveness and customer fulfillment operations throughout the supply chain. The software supports high-speed, high-transaction volume activities, processing as many as 100,000 transactions per hour.
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