Unifarm, an Italian pharmaceutical group providing products and services to member pharmacies, has driven significant improvements to inventory management through their partnership with RELEX Solutions, provider of unified supply chain and retail planning solutions.
Since 2020, Unifarm has fully utilized the RELEX forecasting and replenishment solution across their 5 distribution centers, which supply 40,000+ SKUs to 1,900 independent pharmacies across Northern Italy and Sardinia. The achieved results include the following:
- An 11.6% average reduction in annual inventory
- An 11% average increase in annual inventory turnover, leading to longer shelf life for medications
- Product availability above the market benchmark, despite the COVID-19 pandemic and product shortages
“Our main goal is to satisfy our customer pharmacies,” says Gianluca Gavazza, Unifarm Commercial Director. “With RELEX, we have been able to improve our service level and offer a longer shelf life for medications, all while cutting operational costs.”
“We are happy we have been able to help Unifarm further increase their level of service despite the obstacles of the COVID-19 pandemic and supply chain disruptions,” says Jarno Martikainen, Italy Country Director at RELEX Solutions. “We are confident Unifarm will continue to see improvements to their competitiveness through our state-of-art solution.”
The RELEX solution also supports Unifarm’s exclusive vendor-managed inventory (VMI) service known as SARA (Sistema Avanzato di Riordino Automatico or Advanced Automatic Replenishment System). SARA allows participating pharmacies to automate ordering and improve inventory management while shaping replenishment criteria for their individual needs. A growing number of 260+ pharmacies make use of the replenishment system and have achieved the following results:
- Decreased stock levels
- Reduction of returns and past due items
- Time savings in the daily reordering process
- Reduction in pending sales
“Updates to the system are continuous, with the aim of improving performance to adapt it to each individual pharmacy’s specific needs,” says Unifarm Vice President Francesca Rauzi.