TeamViewer and SAP transform pharmaceutical distribution for Nadro with augmented reality
The story in a nutshell
- Nadro is the premier pharmaceutical wholesale distributor in Mexico, distributing 51 million medical and personal care products per month to pharmacies across the country.
- With demand growing by up to 25% year-to-year, Nadro needed to modernize its warehouse strategy to help improve performance.
- TeamViewer and SAP delivered the solution for digitalized cloud-based warehousing and picking processes based.
- Improved order picking time by 30%, while time for onboarding and training was reduced by 93%.
- Reduced error rate increases satisfaction among Nadro’s customers.
- Overtime is no longer required despite an increase in orders meaning staff are more empowered and have a better work-life balance.
Background
Founded in 1943, Nadro S.A. de C.V. is the premier pharmaceutical wholesale distributor in Mexico. With a fleet of 1,250 vehicles across 15 distribution centers, the company distributes 51 million medical and personal care products per month to pharmacies across Mexico. Nadro also provides training and specialized services to pharmacies to help manage their operations and inventories. The company’s president, Don Pablo Escandon Cusi, has made it his mission to bring good health to everyone in Mexico with high quality solutions for the benefit and well-being of employees and patients.
Wholesale and distribution companies like Nadro have been met with a series of challenges over the last few years. From global supply chain disruption to skills shortages and economic volatility, companies need to become more flexible to adapt to these issues and meet the ever-increasing customer demand.
As the most important wholesaler in Mexico for pharmaceutical products, Nadro needed to modernize its warehouse strategy to stay ahead of these challenges and an increased demand. It needed to deliver the right healthcare products at the right time across the country. While competitors deliver once or twice per week, Nadro offers daily deliveries, equaling 400,000 deliveries each month.
With the volume of sales continually increasing by 20 to 25% year-over-year, higher customer expectations and ever more challenging service-level requests, Nadro started looking for a solution to help improve its performance to meet demands, help ensure accurate deliveries, and provide the highest level of customer service.
Nadro’s former picking process included a number of steps to fulfill orders using bulky, hand-held devices with multiple screens to pick a single item. Data was not synced efficiently back into the warehouse management system and exception handling was not built into the process workflows. At the same time, they experienced long ramp-up times for new employees and high turnover rates that led to inefficiencies and higher costs due to errors and the need for more overtime.
Challenges
To prepare for growth and continue delivering an exceptional customer experience, Nadro began an innovation initiative to modernize the company’s warehouse strategy in accordance with the company’s overarching digital transformation initiative shared by Don Pablo Escandon Cusi. The company looked for technology partners who would help it fulfill its promise of bringing health to everyone in Mexico.
Nadro selected TeamViewer and SAP for its transformation project due to their proven partnership track record in delivering innovative cloud-based warehousing solutions that could consistently manage a large number of orders.
TeamViewer Frontline’s vision picking solution running on Vuzix M400 smart glasses, along with the SAP Extended Warehouse Management application, were chosen to help Nadro manage a high volume of goods thanks to digitalized cloud-based warehousing and picking processes.
Working with the flexibility and comprehensive industry know-how of TeamViewer’s dedicated customer success team meant that Nadro could engage with important stakeholders such as HR, the unions, and its workforce from the start of the process. By ensuring that warehouse employees were consulted from the beginning increased adoption and productivity.
“At first, we were skeptical that older, more experienced employees would be receptive to this technology. So, we conducted a baseline study with a veteran, 51-year-old warehouse employee that had worked at Nadro for years. The results were very impressive — he was the first employee to achieve at least 150% increase in productivity,” said Carlos Flores, Chief Innovation Officer at Nadro. “When you see that you are helping people be happy doing their jobs, no matter their age, it is empowering.”
The picking process is executed through TeamViewer Frontline and a direct integration into SAP Extended Warehouse Management. Warehouse workers receive real-time order and fulfillment information through intuitive, AR-based digital workflows on smart glasses. The solution walks them step-by-step through the fulfillment process and syncs with SAP EWM in real-time to continually share data, while the employees’ hands remain 100% free for the picking tasks.
When items should not be available or in good condition, the picker can report this immediately through the built-in exception handling. This automatically triggers a notification to the backend system (SAP EWM), allowing supervisors to take corresponding actions. Nadro currently has 400 Vuzix smart glasses powered by TeamViewer Frontline, with the vision picking solution gradually being rolled out to all 14 warehouse locations.
“TeamViewer’s Frontline augmented reality and SAP’s Extended Warehouse Management solutions enable the company to be data driven, innovate in ways that help our customers help patients, and deliver on our mission to improve the health of all citizens.”
Chief Innovation Officer at Nadro
Solution
Thanks to vision picking, Nadro can provide better service to customers, have more efficient processes, and higher productivity with complete visibility across the business.
Vision picking reduces the amount of information an operator receives to ensure they are only getting the necessary instructions to do their job right without any distractions. TeamViewer Frontline also responds to voice commands and displays information concerning the picking order directly into the wearer’s field of vision, making the pickers’ tasks easier. Overall, Nadro warehouse workers benefit from a modern workplace solution that provides concise and accurate instructions, and better ergonomics, while the integrated confirmations make errors virtually impossible.
With the roll-out of TeamViewer Frontline and SAP Extended Warehouse Management Nadro has transformed its warehouse operations and now has a modern foundation that can support growth for many years to come. Nadro has been able to improve picking time by 30% while significantly decreasing training time for its employees. The time for onboarding and training was reduced by 93% and employees can work more autonomously more quickly.
Overtime is no longer required despite an increase in orders meaning staff are more empowered and have a better work-life balance.
After proving the business case in selected warehouses, Nadro is continuing to standardize its operations on TeamViewer and SAP for further expansion.
“We are doing more than we ever expected and we are certain this project will be successful. In the course of 2024, we will triple the number of vision picking users with AR-powered smart glasses in our warehouses. In parallel, we are looking at use cases beyond picking that we can digitalize and streamline using augmented reality”, concluded Flores.
Facts and figures
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