In the pharmaceutical industry, the legal requirements for stocktaking are particularly strict: there must be no deviations in the stocks of medicines. The company medac, based in Wedel near Hamburg, has therefore opted for statistically validated sample stocktaking with REMIRA's STATCONTROL Cloud software and is highly satisfied with the results. With an inventory of around 105,000 containers, only 53 samples had to be taken and counted.
The global pharmaceutical company medac focuses on continuously improving approved drugs and developing innovative therapeutic options in the four areas of rheumatology, urology, hematology and oncology. Inventory with REMIRA's STATCONTROL software was first carried out as a service in 2022. In 2023, the upgrade to STATCONTROL Cloud took place, which enables completely paperless stocktaking via an app. This was carried out in the two main medac warehouses. Despite an enormous amount of different items, the effort was extremely low thanks to sample stocktaking:
“We saved an enormous amount of time and effort by introducing it and even improved the quality of the results,”
praises Klaus-Peter Filbrandt, Global Supply Chain Expert at medac. The four people involved needed less than three hours to complete the inventory.
When selecting a software solution, the accuracy of the results was also important to medac, as there must be no deviations when documenting and tracking pharmaceutical stocks in a pharmaceutical company. Another particular challenge is the large number of different products and pack sizes, which generally have to be stored under controlled temperature and humidity conditions. “A comprehensive inventory using a full inventory is therefore not possible for us,” explains Klaus-Peter Filbrandt. medac was therefore already working with random samples before the introduction of STATCONTROL Cloud. “However, these were not statistically validated. In the past, stocktaking always had to be carried out under the supervision of an auditor and was relatively time-consuming despite counting samples,” explains Filbrandt.
With the STATCONTROL Cloud inventory sampling solution from REMIRA, everything was now much quicker and easier: “We were able to concentrate on counting fewer products and batches, which also significantly improved the quality of the results,” praises the supply chain expert.
“There were far fewer discrepancies in the count than in previous years, which was emphasized by everyone involved, including the auditors. This was definitely due to the use of the software,”
adds Filbrandt. In future, the pharmaceutical company therefore wants to include further, smaller individual warehouses in the random sample so that a full inventory is no longer necessary there either. “Thanks to validated statistical procedures, the results then apply to all integrated warehouses, which significantly reduces the workload even further,” says Filbrandt.
“The system is simply brilliant, and the service from REMIRA was also praised by everyone. Despite onboarding at our subsidiary Oncotec at short notice, the inventory also ran smoothly there”,
concludes the supply chain expert.
Bild: ©medac
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