Question What is the optimal value of the inventory of my pharmacy? Is it possible to buy less without faults?
Answer
At the pharmacy, where PVP is tapped for 80% of sales, and is very similar to the remaining 20% \u200b\u200bbenefit increase is closely linked to the optimization of purchasing and inventory management.
The objective of inventory management is to minimize inventory levels can ensure quality of service, ie, avoiding mistakes. The stock is measured by the annual turnover rate, which is the number of times the stock has been sold through pharmacy in a year. Colloquially speaking of the number of returns to stock. A slow moving stock that is high because it is unprofitable to be financed (paid the bill before selling product) and because the money and hence profitability, is invested in the store. A fast-moving stock, ie very low, it can be very profitable for the faults that occur high, with the resulting image to the customer and lost sales. This ratio must be greater than 7 and tend to 10 (this depends on the type of pharmacy for its location, time and percentage of nonprescription).
An effective inventory management is closely related to the purchasing power of pharmacy, the maturity of the invoice of the purchased product, the demand forecast, the type of product purchased and your provider and, finally, proportionality between cost price and volume purchase.
For purchases of most stocks, the English pharmacy has the enormous advantage of having a high quality distribution service that serves the product once, twice or more times a day, greatly easing management stock. However, to optimize procurement and cost of inventory, it is necessary to make two previous actions:
1. Sort products ABCD:
• Articles A are the best selling, at least one unit per day. They are usually between 50 and 100 products. • Item B
turnover and profitability have Intermediate, sold at least every 15 days. Along with articles A, account for 65% of sales and 15% of the products.
• Items C have very low turnover-sold between 15 and unit every year or every 6 months, and account for 30% of sales and 75% of the number of references. D
• Items sold less than one unit per year. Ideally there should be none.
2. Set maximum and minimum stock. Ie for each product, you must know the stock should be minimum and maximum mark the purchase volume:
• Articles A must have a minimum of stock involving units twice the time in days that our provider takes to make the delivery of order, and up to study in each case depending on the conditions of purchase and the maturity of the bill.
• Items must have a minimum B stock which represents one more than the time in days that our provider takes to make the delivery of an order and a maximum of twice the minimum. C
• Items must have a minimum stock of 0 and a maximum of 1. D
• Items must have a stock of 0 and ask for customer demand.
When analyzing the inventory of a pharmacy under these parameters, we usually realize that the remaining stock over 20% of the ideals, which, in statistical terms, an average € 12,000 yearly, instead of being in the pocket of the pharmacist, are in the back room or on the shelf. Parapharmacy
products, EFP or generic, often have a very competitive price with the dealer, so you should make the request directly to the laboratory. For these cases, I recommend that the pharmacist made the following statements:
• First, select the most important product categories of pharmacy (depending on the client) and from these, trademarks and / or basic products provide maximum return. You do not need everything.
• More cost effective to have a selection of marks and products and invest in staff training to enable him to justify the purchase of a product, you have everything. "
• Sometimes the savings achieved by the direct purchase of some products, valued in terms of stock management (additional reception time and store size), is minimal compared to "lower wholesale mark" (especially if we note that the distribution applies some tables to assess the discount based on total purchases). n KEY
• Selection of suppliers based on service, price and security.
• Have good product ABCD classification.
• Have maximum and minimum purchases and stock for each reference.
• Invest in staff training to justify the sale of products to be enhanced.
• Consider that the biggest cost is not always the price of the product but the time back office staff and the cost of storage.
• To make a good stock management is necessary to have a proper management program that allows to extract information from stock sales and to Excel.
Luis de la Fuente
Mediformplus Managing Partner of
luis.delafuente @ mediformplus.com
www.mediformplus.com
