Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC), the principal public healthcare provider in Qatar, is using the warehouse management software PROLAG World to continuously secure its medical services. With nine specialist hospitals, three community hospitals and a host of other facilities and services, HMC is a key provider of diverse types of healthcare services throughout the Middle East. PROLAG World manages the supply and delivery of pharmaceutical products at their newly built medical distribution centre in Doha with a state-of-the-art small parts picking solution.
When Fritz Mayr, CEO of CIM, received the news that HMC had opted for CIM’s warehouse management system PROLAG World to manage the intralogistics at their new distribution centre, he hadn’t really expected that the collaboration between the two companies would actually go ahead, given that Doha, Qatar isn’t exactly around the corner from Fürstenfeldbruck.
As managing director of CIM, he had been the first point of contact with HMC and was passionate about the project right from the start. “We’ve always been well positioned internationally, but we’d never managed a warehouse in the Arab region before,” he says. “So HMC was a huge opportunity for us.”
Hamad Medical Corporation is one of the biggest healthcare providers on the Arabian Peninsula and beyond. The company manages over twelve hospitals, placing high demands in terms of intralogistics. In order to meet these demands into the future, a new distribution centre was designed and built in Doha. “I’m pleased to say that this is a very prestigious project”, states Fritz Mayr with regard to the dimensions and scope of the new logistics centre.
PROLAG World as a standard solution for the pharmaceutical industry
CIM project manager Thomas Rolli nods in agreement. “What PROLAG World actually does is to manage small parts picking in the medical supplies warehouse,” he explains. This particular application area is part of PROLAG World’s standard solution for the pharmaceutical industry, which allowed the system to be configured relatively smoothly. For HMC, this was one of the key capabilities of the software. “The WMS allows greater workflow efficiency, enabling centralised management of multiple different medical and pharmaceutical products,” Alexander Guthrie explains. For healthcare functionality, PROLAG World is designed to accommodate the most common requirements in terms of business processes and stock retrieval strategies in medical logistics operations. “Sterile items often require special handling, for example,” says Thomas Rolli. “For the pharmaceutical products, we set up a control station where items that have already been picked undergo further checks. This luckily isn’t a problem for PROLAG World since these types of process are an integral part of the standard system.”
Picking using pick-by-light
The challenge in terms of technical implementation was that CIM is responsible primarily for stock retrieval and order picking. “It's a bit like driving with the handbrake on,” says Thomas Rolli smiling. “Inventory and warehousing are not part of our remit. How it works in the warehouse is that the requested stock is routed by PROLAG World to the relevant stations where the order is then picked.” Order picking is performed using state-of-the-art warehouse technology. HMC’s distribution centre uses handheld scanners as well as a pick-to-light system to guide and assist the staff at the picking stations. “We added additional system redundancy to enable emergency operation in the event of the pick-to-light system breaking down,” explains Thomas, who was responsible for developing the concept. PROLAG World controls the number of totes at the respective stations in real time and, if necessary, sets up a queue to avoid congestion. “The unusual thing is that PROLAG World as a warehouse management system actually uses existing stock. When stock is reserved in this special case, it has to be created virtually before it can be picked,” continues Thomas.
Restricted system use as a challenge
This didn’t prove to be a hurdle for PROLAG Word since the system already provides a function for virtual stock creation in special cases. “But it gets more difficult when the exception suddenly becomes the rule,” explains Thomas. “We first had to be sure that there would be no negative side effects.”
To enable the CIM team to do this, the entire system was put through its paces on site. Thomas was extremely impressed by the customer's enormous discipline in terms of testing. “HMC has an extremely effective testing concept which harmonised perfectly with our strategy.” In fact, Thomas was so impressed that he has plans to use a few of HMC’s tests in some of his other projects. “The user acceptance test is the ideal complement to our own testing procedures and we’re intending to introduce it across all projects at CIM,” he says.
Enhanced efficiency and effectiveness
HMC is meanwhile very happy with PROLAG World, which has significantly increased the efficiency and effectiveness of their processes. “Thanks to our collaboration with CIM, we were even able to introduce some extra improvements,” says Alexander Guthrie, in other words, the collaboration was a resounding success for HMC. “The project team from CIM spent a long time on site at various stages of the project and always encouraged open communication,” adds Abhishek Sabharwal. Above all, CIM’s competence and professionalism will stick in his mind.
For the team at CIM, the collaboration with Hamad Medical Corporation means another successful installation in the pharmaceutical sector.
