Logisticompany AB uses Ongoing WMS to streamline health care logistics

As is often the case for healthcare products, the different suppliers labelled the goods with different barcode standards, either HIBC or GS1. HIBC is an American standard for medical and pharmaceutical products whereas GS1 is a non-profit association that has developed standards for labelling goods e.g. GTIN. Both contains a unique identifier for the goods together with other information such as batch number, expiry date or quantity. Though an increasing number of companies are replacing HIBC with GS1, HIBC are still commonly used, primarily in USA. This can be problematic for logistics provers, which have to deal with barcodes that need to be decoded in different ways.

Logisticompany AB, having a high focus on user friendly warehouse processes, wanted to be able to handle both barcodes the same way, reducing the need for warehouse workers to know what type of barcode they were dealing with. “To be successful as a logistic company, you need to have software to make the working processes easy for everyone working in the warehouse” says Logisticompany's Partner and Sales Manager Peter Forsberg. Together with their WMS supplier, Ongoing Warehouse, they started a project to build a scanning module that could handle multiple barcode standards without the user identifying the barcode type.

Johan Härdmark, account manager for Logisticompany AB at Ongoing Warehouse, says the solution has a wider usage than scanning multiple barcodes. In many cases, the problem might not only be the usage of multiple barcode standards on different products, but that the labels do not follow the standard in full. “For example, the serial number might be labelled as a batch-number which results in storing data in the wrong field in the WMS which in turn makes features not to working as intended” Johan explains. With the new scanning several ways to decode a barcode can be set up, together with validations of the data. Once a barcode is scanned, Ongoing WMS will try to decode the barcode according to the schemas set up.  When put in use, the new scanning did not only make the process in the warehouse easier for the warehouse staff but also speeded up the inbound and outbound processes and resulted in better control of the goods.

Logisticompany AB, valuing a close relationship with their own customers, has appreciated that the development has been in close cooperation with Ongoing Warehouse “We have become a great team, which is one of the success factors.” Peter says.