SITUATION

The hospitals in Toronto’s University Healthcare Network use products from 150 vendors on their nursing floors. Suppliers vary widely in size and product line, ranging from small companies with little or no technology capabilities to industry giants like Johnson & Johnson, Baxter Laboratories and Tyco Healthcare. Historically, the hospitals faxed their purchase orders to the suppliers, who faxed purchase order acknowledgements back and shipped the product. Maintaining inventory was a consistent problem and attempts at just-in-time delivery met with varying success.

 

THE INITIAL SOLUTION

The hospitals created an independent third-party logistics company to handle procurement, inventory and delivery to the nursing sites: Hospital Logistics, Inc. (HLI). HLI is located in Oakville, a Toronto suburb, where it operates a 37,000 square foot distribution center. HLI inventories 3,800 active SKUs, representing an annual sales volume of approximately $60 million. The company takes actual ownership of the product, warehouses it and delivers it where needed on a just-in-time basis. At start-up, HLI employed the existing fax-order/acknowledgment process, but quickly moved to more sophisticated technology.

 

THE IDEAL TECHNOLOGY-BASED SOLUTION

Hospitals now order their product through HLI directly from the points of consumption -- the nursing floors -- via personal digital assistants (PDAs) or standalone computers. The PDAs are networked to HLI’s enterprise resource planning system, Elite from Tecsys Inc. with an Oracle database. The automated link between the ERP Elite system and each supplier is provided by ACOM’s EZConnect EDI/XML software.

 

ABOUT ACOM’S EZCONNECT EDI/XML

EZConnect is a universal, any-to-any data translator that supports U.S. and international EDI standards, as well as Internet (XML) standards and extensions, and proprietary flat-file documents. Built around SQL database technology, it integrates directly with applications such as Elite and Oracle via an ODBC connection, requiring no intermediate flat file conversions. It operates untended, 24/7, computerto-computer, with about 20 companies that supply 80 percent of the hospitals’ consumables.

 

SUCCESS

EZConnect EDI/XML was implemented and tested
quickly with zero trading partner issues.

Direct benefits include:

• Instantaneous transaction document delivery
• Efficient and flexible document handling
• Elimination of errors deriving from manual entries
• Significant costs savings
• More effective deployment of personnel
• Volume and variety of transactions is up, with additional healthcare institutions becoming participants in the program.

 

 

Next Steps

• Live Demonstration
• More Information