PBM mail order pharmaceutical supplier increased fulfillment productivity from 4,000 packages in a 17 hour workday to same volume produced in just 4.67 hours.
PBM Mail Order Fulfillment
In the United States, a pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) is a third-party administrator of prescription drug programs for commercial health plans, self insured employer plans, Medicare Part D plans, the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, and state government employee plans.
The Problem
Besides the inherent inefficiency of hand loading, the process utilized flat bags, which required employees to try to push out as much air as possible once the bag was loaded. The loading rate was just 480 bags per hour per employee. Standard box pricing made it prohibited to continue to use manual labor and corrugated to fulfill orders.
Stringent standards for patient confidentiality also had to be met to comply with the laboratory environments in which would ultimately be used. The customer’s operation suffered from low productivity, capacity issues and customer complaints. They had tried everything from craft bags to peel & stick bags and even wicketed baggers — a total of four different systems before asking Sharp Packaging for a better solution.
The L-bar sealers which this customer formerly used required operators to hand-load the bag’s contents and then wait to seal the bag. A cold-seal system turned out to be expensive, slow to set up, and extremely difficult to keep running; what’s more, customers complained about unpleasant odors the sealant. Peel & stick bags offered disappointing productivity at just 100 bags/hour.
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