Maximum Product Availability as well as Reduced Costs and Capital Commitment
Besides process costs, the high level of capital commitment resulting from inventories in particular is a key efficiency lever in the supply chain. Arvato Supply Chain Solutions offers a number of solutions for optimizing your demand, inventory and procurement planning with intelligent and often automated processes, enabling you to achieve the ideal combination of high flexibility and low capital commitment.
With the help of our intelligent analysis tools, we define – at the item level – the optimum inventory level and frequencies based on different factors, such as sales volumes, forecasts and fluctuations or product values and contribution margins. Additionally, we support you in defining an optimum inventory location concept for your particular requirements. In the case of medicines and replacement parts, for instance, it might be most reasonable to store inventory directly at the location where it is going to be used. It is essential to determine whether, and in what quantity, inventories should be in the field – that is, in a consignment warehouse or forward stocking location (FSL), with short delivery times (same day) to the recipient.
As a full-service provider, Arvato also offers solutions in the field of inventory management, such as the maintenance and management of FSLs, transport from the FSLs to the place of use, and inventory and VMI solutions, including the stocking of inventories at the POS or at the POC (point of care, e.g. hospitals). These solutions bridge the gap between central warehouses and maximum availability at the POS or place of use.
If a fast subsequent delivery to the recipient is sufficient for guaranteeing high availability at the POS, we combine the inventory management systems at the POS with our order management systems and initiate an automatic subsequent delivery when stocks fall below a defined reorder point.
Besides such VMI solutions – in which our clients are the “vendor” – we also support inventory management models in which your suppliers remain the owner of the goods, even if the inventories are already physically in your warehouse with Arvato. These include “change of ownership” processes, for example, which we map accordingly.
We operate the full spectrum of inventory management in an IT system, regardless of whether the goods are in a central warehouse, a satellite warehouse, a forward stocking location or a consignment warehouse with your customer. The ensures you maximum inventory transparency.
Solutions Overview
- Inventory and procurement planning
- Forecasting and predictive analysis
- Supplier management
- Master data management
- Lot, batch and serial number management and tracking
- Management of “change of ownership” processes
- Field inventory management
- Cycle counting
- Vendor managed inventory (VMI)
- Operation of forward stock locations (FLS)
- Special solutions for the point of care in hospitals
(inventory management for medical and pharmaceutical products, including the identification and return of products that are nearing their expiration date)
Benefits
- Optimization of inventory costs while ensuring high availability at the POS and place where the products are used
- High level of stock reliability and transparency
- Considerable time savings and faster delivery through automated processes
- End-to-end transparency through data integration in a global IT system
STOK Hospital Study
Massive investment in high-performance AutoStore solution
And we can do much more! Please do not hesitate to contact us.
Tell us about your individual application and requirements. We make it possible - the right solution for you!