WMS with high responsibility

DiaSys Diagnostic Systems GmbH develops and produces reagents and systems for clinical laboratories and the diagnostic market. The company stocks around 27,900 items at its site in Holzheim. DiaSys also has its own in-house production facility, where semi-finished products such as reagent preparations, finished products such as liquid and stable reagents and laboratory systems are manufactured.

The number and diversity of the articles, the special storage conditions and the legal regulations and special features for the stored products place high demands on the warehouse and therefore also on the warehouse management system of DiaSys Diagnostic Systems GmbH.

The entire storage area is divided into 27 storage locations. These are divided into standard warehouses, stub warehouses, block warehouses, quarantine warehouses and raw material warehouses with three temperature zones as well as a cold store and six megamats. Raw materials are taken from these storage locations and transported to the filling area, where the reagents are produced.

Storage bins and stock movements optimized

The objectives of introducing new warehouse management software were basically quite simple: "In addition to increasing the transparency of warehouse movements and thus the precise traceability of goods, the main focus was on the error-free control of production processes and the optimization of storage locations and warehouse movements," explains Stefan Gehm, Production Manager at DiaSys.

High stock accuracy thanks to constant monitoring

Filling is also system-controlled. Optimized Prolag World campaign planning reduces time and organizational effort. Where possible, the system combines several orders into one campaign so that the same reagent can be filled across multiple orders, for example. A new feature is that the system checks whether the required bottles, closures and reagents are sufficient or whether additional supplies are needed. The reagents are weighed at the beginning and end of the filling process, ensuring extremely high stock accuracy of the reagents in the system. The exact data can be called up promptly in the stock overview in Prolag World. The special feature of the filling process is the automatic and cross-floor control over two levels. The two existing Megamat lifts were integrated into Prolag World in such a way that they can supply the two floors in parallel for one order or independently of each other. "This innovation has enabled us to reduce running and waiting times by around 50 percent," says Peter Vykoupil, project manager at CIM GmbH.

The choice fell on the Prolag World warehouse management system from CIM GmbH. "The decisive factors for our decision were the clear process understanding of the CIM employees and the company's experience and references," says Gehm. The company from Fürstenfeldbruck near Munich is one of the first and most experienced providers of warehouse management solutions in Germany. For over 30 years, CIM GmbH has been setting new standards in intralogistics with its software solutions.

Optimum flow of movement through circulation picking

An employee takes the raw materials he needs for filling from the raw materials store. Photo: DiaSys

"To ensure a smooth flow in the warehouse, the first step was to guarantee a perfect supply of raw materials," says Peter Vykoupil, project manager at CIM GmbH. "The required raw materials must be available at all times. At the same time, no regular storage locations must be blocked when the raw materials are brought to production. This challenge was solved in the system by means of circulation picking. This means that a complete storage aid with the required raw materials is always removed from the warehouse and transported to production. The occupied storage location is freed up immediately.

Once the storage aid has arrived at the batch production area, the employee removes the required raw materials specified by the system. During batch production, the system specifies the sequence of raw material containers. Opened containers are used first. The system also controls the order in which the raw materials must be added.

Scales are connected to the system

Prolag World already ensures comprehensive quality management during production. "The system specifications mean that no incorrect raw material can be removed," confirms Stefan Gehm. In addition, the system initiates a pH value measurement using the connected pH meter. With the help of the scales connected to the CIM system, the weighed quantities are no longer documented on paper, but in electronic form. Retention or test samples stored by the system also ensure that the goods produced can be checked retrospectively, for example in the event of a complaint.

Seamless traceability of the individual batches

The traceability of produced goods guaranteed by DiaSys has been further optimized thanks to Prolag World's batch management and batch tracing. The individual batches are recorded when the raw materials are received and are also assigned to the corresponding finished products in the system after filling. This makes it possible to trace the batch from which the raw materials for a particular product originate at any time.

DiaSys Production Manager Stefan Gehm is satisfied with the software implementation: "With the help of Prolag World, we were able to optimize existing processes such as the seamless traceability of batches, goods and productions and define new processes quickly and successfully." The Managing Director of CIM GmbH, Fritz Mayr, is also very satisfied with the course of the project and the implementation of the system. "Thanks to our in-house converter, we were able to integrate the system into the existing system landscape using various interfaces, enabling Prolag World to work reliably and quickly."

Daniel Wöhr