As part of the Pharmacy’s LEAN Journey, a two-bin storage and inventory system was put in place. There was an overall plan for the inventory management system, but the most immediate advantages we found were that we had a less cluttered, space saving way to store our meds that helped us identify when something needed to be ordered. However, over the course of the last 12 months, we have seen improvements in our ordering processes and significant and welcomed changes to the amount of time our staff spends placing orders.
Prior to the two-bin inventory management system, a pharmacy inventory analyst would spend two to four hours each day determining what needed to be ordered and placing an order. Ordering was an art form that was perfected by inventory employees- and was very hard to replicate by non-inventory employees. Whenever our only inventory analyst was out on PTO, we would inevitably end up with too much of something because the people filling in for the analyst had not developed the same skill at ordering and knowing how much of each item should be ordered.
The two-bin system has allowed us to quantify, using historical ordering data, how much of each item we need to keep in stock. The order cards that are kept in each of the storage bins identifies the medication, where it is ordered from, how much we should keep on hand, and it has a barcode that can be used when the order is being placed. When the front bin is empty, pharmacy employees remove the card from the bin and place it in a card collection location. The cards can then be retrieved by the inventory analyst when it is time to place the order. The cards are sorted into piles based on where the order will be placed, and then when they are ready to place the orders, the analyst scans the barcodes to identify the products in the ordering system and refer to the information on the card to know how much to order. A process that used to take multiple hours each day of the week is now being completed much more efficiently in 1-2 hours, and only two times a week. Our stock levels have improved and we run out of items much less frequently.
An added benefit is that the system that has been developed allows for someone who is not an expert at ordering to place an order for an appropriate amount of inventory whenever the inventory analyst is out. Prior to the two-bin system, the ordering process involved a notebook, referred to as the “want book,” where staff would identify items that needed to be ordered, but not the quantity to order. In the past, there would be several pages of items that needed to be ordered each day. The want book is now generally unused because all of the items that need to be ordered are already identified by their cards. The art of pharmacy inventory management has become much more of a science and we are huge fans!
We plan to continue to fine tune our two-bin ordering system to decrease the amount of stock that we outdate. We will also expand it to include items in our inpatient pharmacy in the upcoming months. We save hours of ordering each week and have improved our ability to keep the right amount of medication in stock. The pharmacy two-bin inventory management system is a perfect example of a LEAN process working well to decrease waste and improve efficiency.
