Case Study:
WMS and Material Handling Integration

About MediMedia Health

• MediMedia Health, is an innovative specialty healthcare communications, publishing, and medical education company with more than 1,600 employees and offices throughout the U.S.
• Their capabilities extend to doctors, healthcare professionals, managed health organizations, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, veterinarians, employers, patients and consumers.

Challenge

• With the acquisition of Phoenix Marketing Group, LLC (PMG) by Triple I, a division of MediMedia, the parent company also acquired a second fulfillment center in New Jersey – each with its own Warehouse Management System; the PMG facility also had a highly customized, proprietary Warehouse Control System (WCS) that controlled its material equipment.
• MediMedia understood that the challenge of maintaining two disparate WMSs and the risk of managing a highly customized WCS was not in their best interest. The material handling equipment required a significant amount of maintenance and the interfaces between the MHE and the WCS were tenuous at best.

Tompkins’ Role

• Perform a supply chain technology assessment intended to review current business operations, technology processes and infrastructure to determine capabilities and limitations.
• Analyze the current business processes and operations to identify the optimal technology and functional requirements.
• Assess the current WMS and WCS functionality, configuration and usage.

The Results

• Identified the improvement in business processes and detailed the requirements that would drive standardization of the operations, the WMS and a WCS across distribution centers.
• Provided improvement opportunities and a WMS and WCS strategy that created a roadmap for their future supply chain IT portfolio, which will realize well more than $1 million dollars in labor and administrative savings annually.
• Reduced risk, returns and order cycle times, increased capacity, visibility and inventory accuracy, and lowered transportation costs, overhead and total cost of ownership.
• Helped MediMedia Health have greater opportunities to grow their business with little to no additional capital expenditures due to the operation improvements and the robust technology infrastructure that was recommended.