Smart Supply Chain Boosts Efficiency & Cost-savings, Meeting Regulatory Requirements

Storeroom for drugs should be clean and dry, and maintained within acceptable temperature and humidity limits with detectors which can record results for monitoring and review, according to the “Requirements on Storage of Pharmaceutical Products” stipulated by the Drug Office of the Department of Health (DoH).

As an established distributor for various world-famous medicine and healthcare products, including Weisen-U and Ricqlès Peppermint Cure, the International Medical Co. Ltd (TIMC) takes serious care on its warehouses’ temperature and humidity to ensure products’ quality, and to fulfil the renewal requirements for drug licence for wholesale dealers required by the DoH.

TIMC has several warehouses in Hong Kong for storing pharmaceutical and healthcare products. Until now, the company would dispatch 1 - 2 workers to different warehouses to take records of the temperature and humidity, compiling a report for authorities’ auditing purpose. The company recognised the need for a more effective solution for such arrangement.

TIMC thus invited GS1 HK’s Smart Professional Services (SPS) team to review its operation flow, make recommendations and execute Smart Operations throughout its warehouse and fleet management. By installing smart sensors, TIMC can now automate the process of temperature and humidity’s monitoring and logging, so that the storage condition of all healthcare items including the regulated drug products along the supply chain are being monitored with the highest standard, ensuring their first-class quality.

7x24 Monitoring & Logging

GS1 HK’s SPS team has also helped TIMC set up a centralised system to integrate and display various information about the company’s warehouse and fleet on a dashboard. This eliminates the needs for manual entries, and enables remote surveillance by employees with different access rights to monitor their responsible storage areas anytime, anywhere. This is particularly useful for employees during the pandemic to work remotely and ensure no disruption to business. When an abnormality in temperature or humidity is detected inside a warehouse or a truck, the employees will receive alert immediately and take precautions, lowering incident rate or any associated risks.

Cost Saving

The solution deployment was completed in 4-months’ time, whence training on the daily running of the Smart Operations solution was conducted. TIMC has been able to reduce the time and resources needed for in-person human input, which roughly translates to a saving of HK$200,000 per year. In addition, the integrated system automatically generates reports of all the data tracked, which allows the company to fulfill the requirement from the Department of Health on the storage environment of drugs in a very efficient way.

Apply in New Market

TIMC has undergone digitalisation in their operation for some time, using barcode, GS1 HK’s ezTRADE platform, ERP system and more. For instance, the company uses electronic system to transmit purchase order and invoice of the drugs supplied to the Hospital Authority and other local pharmacies. Looking to expand overseas, TIMC is considering to broaden the digital and smart applications to the local supply chains to increase efficiency on remote monitoring and management, and ensure instant response to any problems.

The Smart Operations solution strengthen TIMC’s operation efficiency and risks management in terms of:

The International Medical Co. Ltd has close to 60 years of experience in wholesale and dealership of western pharmaceutical products. The brand owner of Citracium, it is also the sole agent of Weisen-U, Ricqlès Peppermint Cure, Double Prawn Herbal Oil, as well as other well-known pharmaceutical products from Europe and the US. Trade across the globe, TIMC sales network span across public and private clinics, the Hospital Authority, private hospitals, pharmacies, chain stores, and supermarkets etc.