Inventory management at the point of care

Logistics for medical devices in and en route to hospitals

Intelligent Solutions at the Point of Care

By offering STOK’s tailored services for medical equipment and pharmaceutical companies, Arvato is providing efficient logistics and inventory management solutions in and en route to hospitals. These services create transparency regarding stock levels, product usage and product availability, while also saving manufacturers time and money. In this way, Arvato also reduces the workload of external sales forces and hospital staff so that they have more time for their core tasks.

With its many years of experience in the healthcare market, especially in the area of supplying clinics with medical products, Arvato’s STOK team is the ideal partner for effective logistics and transparent inventory management processes – throughout Europe. STOK employees perform regular inventory inspections and reporting tasks, which means that hospital staff have more time for what matters most – patient wellbeing. Improvements in product availability also strengthen the partnership between hospitals and medical technology manufacturers.

 

At a glance: 

  • The leading European service system for the inventory management of high-value healthcare products at hospitals
  • Guarantees constant product availability while also optimising process costs
  • Specialists in high-value medical and pharmaceutical products – all of the statutory requirements are fulfilled
  • Partnerships with leading medical technology manufacturers
  • Our team of specialists has unrivalled expertise in the field of medical devices and is familiar with the specific demands of the cardiology and orthopaedics industries, for example. It also knows each hospital’s individual requirements and preferences – throughout Europe

 

Your personal contact

Dr.-Ing. Sebastian Verhoeven

Vice President STOK Europe

Services that We Take Over for You

STOK Inventory Management at a glance

Inventory Management

  • Routine physical inventory checks (e.g. monthly or quarterly) to provide unprecedented transparency on consignment inventory in hospitals
  • Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) service to help nurses and sales to fully focus on their core tasks
  • Proactive monitoring and management of expiry dates of items in the field to mitigate quality risks
  • Varying degrees of investigation of inventory discrepancies to relieve sales and customer services
  • Support inventory replenishment, obtaining POs and invoicing

Implant Kits

  • Management of implant kits in our own local warehouses (Forward Stocking Locations) with full coverage of order-to-invoice cycle
  • Transport management and transportation of implant kits with own dedicated fleet directly into hospital wards
  • Implant kit swap service for high volume hospitals that don’t have consignment
  • Urgent & courier deliveries with 24/7 service

Value Added Service

  • Programmer- / software updates for capital equipment in hospitals and doctor’s practices
  • Equipment checks, e.g. for NWPT pumps (usage logging, updating, movements) or thermometers (calibrations, swaps, replacements)
  • Bio bins
  • Returns
  • Equipment moves
Inventory Management with STOK

Our Business Solution

Find out how you can make your inventory management even more efficient! Read more about our solutions in and en route to the hospital. 

PDF version

Our Solutions

The most important and cross-industry information on all Arvato solutions can be found here:

All solutions at a glance

5,000 ft²

European Forward Stocking Location footprint

35

More than 35 customers rely on us

300,000

Express and implant kit deliveries in 2018

We bridge the gap between central warehouse and local availability

STOK partners with numerous medical technology manufacturers and its solutions are based on a client-specific, modular service concept. The solutions range from stocktaking on the ward and site-specific usage analyses and recommendations regarding the optimum stock level, right through to comprehensive inventory management solutions – our Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) service. In addition to recording and replenishing stocks, the VMI service also includes the reordering, management and redistribution of products that are close to their expiry date. To this end, our STOK employees pay regular, comprehensive visits to hospitals throughout Europe.

In addition to our portfolio of services, which includes Cycle Counting, Inventory Management and VMI, our implant kits also help manufacturers to significantly reduce stock levels at their consignment warehouses. STOK creates kits by collating all products and consumables needed for an implantation. The kits are delivered to the ward at the hospital as required for the operation, after which they are collected again. STOK has its own fleet of vehicles, which we use to provide prompt deliveries directly to the hospital wards – in emergencies these deliveries arrive within just a few hours. Afterwards, STOK employees check to see which products were used so that the hospital is only invoiced for the articles actually used.

 

Having a designated contact person reduces complexity

Behind the scenes, the customer service team takes care of all of the administrative tasks associated with STOK’s services. These include documentation, the accurate and timely settlement with manufacturers, invoicing and the whole area of order processing. We support every client with our comprehensive reporting system and we actively make recommendations regarding stock levels and the frequency of deliveries. In addition to this, each hospital has one of our STOK employees as a permanent point of contact. This employee records stock levels, restocks and collects products.

The Advantages for Manufacturers

  • Avoidance of costs assosiated with product expiry and destruction 
  • Increades sales due to hiher levels of product availability while keeping stock levels low
  • Increase in transparency regarding data and usage
  • The potential to minimize costs for delivery and transport by consolidating shipments 
  • Reduction in inventory discrepancies
  • Relieving thw workload of the manufacturer's sales force
  • Quick invoicing 
  • Higher level of customer satisfaction and loyalty

The Advantages for Hospitals

  • Avoiding stock-out situations by using an optimized inventory management system and transparent flows of information 
  • Relieving hospital staff of administrative and logistics-related tasks › more time for patients
  • Hospital staff have one main, cross-manufacturer contact person – for all wards and storage areas 
  • The tailored configuration, delivery and collection of implant kits optimizes stock levels at the hospital
  • Standardized processes and reduced number of interfaces
  • Automatic reporting for hospitals about a suppliers' stock removal data 

Current Topics We Pay Attention to

All results

Large STOK Hospital Survey

In order to find out what added value our STOK inventory management services have for hospitals, and how they can help hospitals to ease their daily workload, Arvato & STOK conducted a survey in cooperation with the University of Paderborn.

To the survey evaluation