Health system saves time, increases productivity with carousel implementation
Previously, it took an hour to pick a typical nursing unit order. Now, it takes an hour to pick all orders for all nursing units
Eight storage carousels now stand where bulk storage, pallet shelves and wire racks once did at West Jersey Health System in Camden.
The new approach to storage is one of several initiatives developed after a year spent rethinking the materials management function, says Paul Weiss, director of support services, logistics management. "We had redundancies and inefficiencies, and felt there'd be savings in automating processes wherever we could."
West Jersey's first step was to change the way supplies were delivered to its four hospitals. Deliveries had always been made in bulk to central supply departments, storerooms, and respiratory or pharmacy departments at each hospital, where case quantities were broken down and then redistributed to nursing units.
"We asked ourselves if there was value in that middle step. There was not, so we decided to find a program that let us deliver directly to end users," Weiss says. That led to another question: Could West Jersey move from case to each deliveries-which meant significantly increasing the number of "picks" from storage- without adding staff? The answer: Yes, by using alternative storage and retrieval systems in the form of horizontal carousels.
Carousels Set Orders Straight
West Jersey's new storage and retrieval system consists of horizontally
rotating shelves suspended from a guide track. The carousel automatically
delivers selections to an operator. This eliminates time spent walking the
aisles searching for items-an activity that can consume as much as 70 percent
of workers' time when shelves and other traditional storage systems are
used. Horizontal carousel operators typically spend only 30 percent of their
time walking and searching for items. In some cases, horizontal carousels
have improved order picking productivity by as much as 600 percent.
Paper requisitions became a thing of the past when West Jersey reengineered its materials management function. Now customers are able to track inventories and place orders electronically. The materials management information system then combines the separate orders, generates a batch order and, through an inter- face, sends a report to the software that runs the horizontal carousels.
The carousel operator arranges the final order into eight batches-one for each carousel-and groups requests by similar departments. An item master database automatically reads the item number and activates the carousels, bringing the appropriate items to a station where they're unloaded. The horizontal carousels have modules that tell operators which carousel and shelf to pick from, and how many of each item to pick. Individual items are placed on a gravity-fed conveyor with eight loading positions, each representing a different order.
Whirlwind Productivity
By using the new carousels and automated ordering systems, the materials
management department has increased its workload without adding staff. Today,
West Jersey has about 2,000 line items in inventory and issues about 105,000
items per month, compared with 65,000 items per month before the change.
"It used to take us an hour to pick a typical order for a single nursing unit. Now we can pick orders for all of the nursing units in a hospital in the same amount of time and with the same number of people as before," Weiss says.
Inventory discrepancies have declined since the horizontal carousels were installed. "An inventory discrepancy is when we pick a 'C' battery instead of a 'D' battery. We don't have that problem to the degree we did before. It's a much cleaner system," Weiss says.
Furthermore, stock rotates more efficiently with the carousel system. Built-in inventory management software can be programmed to store and pick items on a first in/first out basis, so the system always looks for the oldest product in a group. "People stocking and picking from static shelving don't often do that," Weiss adds. "They stack new product on top of old, so that some items never move at all."
What's next for West Jersey? The system plans to continue to roll out its revamped materials program to include other sites in the network's distribution system, such as ambulatory care centers and family practice centers.
For more information, contact Cisco-Eagle.