success story

BETTER THAN ERP: TODAY, VOIGT PHARMA SCHEDULES 100 % WITH ADD*ONE

The Swiss pharmaceutical wholesaler Voigt AG offers its customers delivery of over 40,000 pharmaceuticals, medical, and wellness products within just two hours. This requires a high level of availability. At the same time, industry specifics such as expiration dates or sales promotions influence supply chain management. Today, Voigt plans exclusively with the optimization software ADD*ONE. Since then, the scheduling effort has been reduced by more than 60 %.

Thanks to ADD*ONE, we have increased inventory turnover by 25% while maintaining availability. This result has clearly exceeded our targets. The quality of the order proposals is very good. Also, the insight into our data, such as inventory history, has become much more transparent than it was with SAP.
Dietmar Stock, Division Manager Procurement and Logistics at Voigt Pharma

Guaranteeing good and, above all, economical availability of goods is no easy task, given the special requirements that prevail in pharmaceutical wholesale and the healthcare sector as a whole. “In addition to the sometimes quite short shelf lives, for example in the case of products from the health food range, a strong seasonal business also has an influence on our planning. The demand for sun protection, for example, depends on the temperature, and waves of colds or the hay fever season can also be slightly different each year.” Additional pressure comes from customer sensitivity. “In the case of acute illness or chronic conditions, no patient can wait for their medication. That’s why we deliver to pharmacies and drugstores up to three times a day, sometimes seven days a week,” Stock reports.

As a supplement to the existing ERP system, the ADD*ONE solution suite for the inventory management application area now handles all planning and creates order proposals. 

The introduction of ADD*ONE for inventory optimization has brought about a number of improvements at Voigt. “Thanks to ADD*ONE, we have increased inventory turnover by 25% while maintaining availability. This result has significantly exceeded our goals. The quality of the order proposals is very good. Also, the insight into our data, such as inventory history, has become much more transparent than it was with SAP,” Stock reports. 

CHALLENGES

  • High time pressure due to delivery within two hours
  • Great demand for constant availability of all products
  • Industry specifics, such as expiration dates and seasonal sales fluctuations
  • No sufficient support in order optimization and demand forecasting in the SAP system

RESULTS

  • 25% more inventory turnover with constant availability
  • Reduction in expenses due to 29% fewer purchase order and goods receipt items
  • Quality improvement in material procurement
  • Transformation of the scheduling task to a purely technical activity
Christoph Wiericks

Christoph Wiericks

Expert for Supply Chain Optimization

Christoph Wiericks focuses on process analysis and project planning in the internal supply chain with a focus on inventory optimization. He has been working in the Inventory and Supply Chain division of INFORM GmbH since 2016.

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