A goods reception that no longer runs on one man’s memory

The problem

Hospital logistics are unforgiving. Cold chains that cannot break, deliveries whose priority depends on who is waiting for them upstairs, and suppliers ranging from one-person specialists to global heavy hitters, each with their own paperwork. Labour can account for 40–60% of the total cost of inventory, so small improvements compound, and errors cost more time than the shortcut ever saved.

Reception depended on one person reading order numbers off packing lists, holding the priority rules in his head, and keeping track of what had arrived. Searching a packing list for an order number is tedious work to do well and difficult work to hand over. It is also a poor thing to have resting on a single pair of shoulders, however capable.

What we built

Our smart scanning software, Scandex, renamed Japex on site for reasons that need no explanation. The worker photographs the packing list. The app harvests order numbers and details of the arriving goods from the sender’s own notes, then checks them against the orders already sitting in the Gemini ERP to confirm and sharpen what it read.

What comes back is not a transcription but an instruction: this has arrived, this is its priority, this is where it goes. The worker plans the sorting from there and sends the result onward to the ERP, where Devoca’s Talk’nPick, a wearable pick-by-voice and barcode system, takes each item to the right shelf or recipient.

The work was done with Devoca, Gemini by CGI, and Pohde’s own logistics professionals. A relentless focus on what the people at the receiving door are actually trying to do mattered more than any single piece of the technology.

What changed

“After the usual initial suspicions, people have appreciated the reduction in typing and increased mobility of the work. Although the savings per package don’t seem that spectacular it does add up to real gains in throughput and flexibility. Also, having more detailed and timely information about arrival contents reduces the need to do time-consuming searches for specific items that might be still in transit. Oh, and not to forget the cherry on the top; The reduced amount of mistakes is a great thing!”

Hannu Valtanen, Logistics Project Manager

Japex will never replace Jape. It can make anyone standing at the receiving door almost as good at the job as he was, in their first week.

The part that outlives the app

Scandex passes the sender’s information into the ERP as electronic Despatch Notice messages, part of the PEPPOL standard. That choice is deliberate. As suppliers gradually start sending those messages themselves, the scanning step quietly becomes unnecessary and the receiving end does less work still. The bridge is built in the shape of the standard it is meant to become.