Powering scalable data exchange for climate-neutral shipping
PharmLog aimed to make pharmaceutical logistics more efficient and reliable, but “this was impossible with the more than ten-year-old warehouse management system [WMS] and the risk of a single point of failure," explains Stefan Hollmann, Head of IT at PharmLog Pharma Logistik GmbH. The old warehouse system made compliance with safety and quality requirements for packaging, storage and delivery a major challenge.
PharmLog also had to deal with complex, heterogenous organizational and customer systems, which made fulfilling the increasing efficiency requirements in a highly regulated market more difficult.
The solution to was clear: replacing the old, error-prone WMS with a one that had new functions. However, this upgrade could be adequately enabled only through a uniform integration of applications. PharmLog was looking for an Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) platform that could accept a defined structure with multiclient capability, implement mapping into a target framework and support specific changes.
PharmLog found what it was looking for in IBM® webMethods.
The enterprise-level integration project involved 16 pharmaceutical manufacturers and 12 interface implementations. Initially, only the interface between PharmLog and its clients was replaced, with the old warehouse system as the receiver. This first step facilitated receiving and acknowledging existing messages, enabled by the old interface—without any changes to the sender or receiver. Only in the second step, the introduction of the new warehouse system, was the receiver replaced, and this was done using middleware. As a result, PharmLog’s clients were able to easily convert either individual messages such as delivery notes, delivery note confirmations, goods receipts and inventory additions to the new structure, or all messages. Pikon and nterra, PharmLog partners, supported the company in implementing the project, delivering a new interface in nine months.
PharmLog can also meet the latest requirement for cloud connectivity within its limitations. By eliminating external access and thus creating an exposed host on PharmLog's end, the solution allows customers to exchange their data via the environment hosted by IBM webMethods. This separation ensures that PharmLog's security concept remains intact.
Since the implementation of IBM webMethods, PharmLog’s new integration platform has reliably met all its customer requirements. The unhindered data flow between automated processes serves as a basis for greater customer proximity and climate-neutral shipping. A universal messaging system allows all message structures to be read. Currently, there are 6 such different services for 40 clients and 6 interfaces through which 10,000 delivery notes and 40,000 delivery note items are exchanged every day. "We have now implemented not only the XML messages defined by PharmLog, but also IDoC in various forms, RosettaNet messages, EDI, flat files and FMD/NGDA, and on a technical level, from FTP/SFTP to AS2 over HTTPS. The short runtimes and low error rate during implementation demonstrate the high level of integration to our customers," adds Romann Poon, Head of Application Support for Logistics Systems at PharmLog Pharma Logistik GmbH.
The integration software also allows PharmLog to meet its customers' new requirements. Implementation times have been significantly reduced thanks to the existing broad deployments, and the company is able to support its clients' transition from warehouse to inventory. For instance, Procter & Gamble, a PharmLog client, migrated to a new interface in seven months, with the interface itself being made available within four months.
The logistics service provider PharmLog was founded in 1995 as a cooperation between six major German pharmaceutical manufacturers. The company offers its clients seamless distribution logistics—from order and inventory management to warehousing and picking across Europe as well as global shipping and transport of pharmaceuticals and promotional materials. PharmLog employs 366 people, and it generated a revenue of 48.3 million euros in 2021.
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