If older is wiser, then manufacturing can teach us a lot.
For two hundred years, manufacturing companies have developed proven methods to make a lot of stuff in a short amount of time. And your pharmacy can use their techniques to improve efficiency in your business.
Sure, your pharmacy isn’t Ford. But your business does fill hundreds of prescriptions every day. And, you stock inventory, answer patients’ questions, lead employees and manage operations. That requires a lot of efficiency.
And, making your pharmacy more efficient will pay off. The more efficiently you work, the more money you make and the more patients you help.
Here Are The Best Manufacturing Strategies to Streamline Your Pharmacy
So, take notes from manufacturers to improve your pharmacy’s efficiency. Here are five proven manufacturing strategies to start practicing at your pharmacy today.
Strategy 1: Create SMART goals
Every manufacturer has production goals. Without them, they don’t know how to meet demand or how to improve processes.
Once you establish goals in your pharmacy, you’ll know what to aim for. And, you’ll have a benchmark to measure success.
Make sure you choose SMART goals:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Time-specific
Create goals for every area of your pharmacy.
For example, on the prescription side of the business, set a target script count to fill per hour. On the operational side, determine how fast you want employees to unload and stock drug shipments.
Establish SMART goals—and build on them—to improve every area of your pharmacy.
Strategy 2: Eliminate waste
Waste is the opposite of efficiency. Manufacturers live by the principle of eliminating waste wherever possible.
They always avoid these four areas. Your pharmacy can too.
1. Overproduction
Don’t produce (or order) more than you need. This leads to excess inventory.
Pharmacy example: Ordering too much Allegra® when it’s not allergy season. The medication will expire and you’ll lose your entire investment. Or, you’ll only get part of your investment back when you return it or sell it at a discount.
2. Waiting
When one person waits for another to complete a task, valuable time goes to waste. That time could go into completing other value-add activities.
Pharmacy example: One employee waits to stock inventory as another employee unloads the shipment.
3. Transport
Moving inventory an unnecessary distance or multiple times wastes valuable energy and time.
Pharmacy example: When a tech has to walk from one side of the building to the other for every prescription rather than keeping the fill process in a smaller area.
4. Overprocessing
Don’t process more information than required to get patients what they need.
Pharmacy example: Asking a patient to present his prescription when you’ve already received it electronically.
Strategy 3: Eliminate bottlenecks
Bottlenecks aren’t designed for efficiency. They’re meant to keep that soda from spilling onto your new white shirt when you take a gulp.
Manufacturing needs unrestricted flow. So does your pharmacy.
Start by pinpointing the bottlenecks in your process.
How to identify bottlenecks:
- Create a flowchart of your current process
- Mark how much time each step takes
- Evaluate where the process gets held up
For example, your technician fills five prescription bottles at once and then puts those bottles one-by-one into an electronic pill counter for verification. The efficiency gained by simultaneously filling five bottles is wasted when each bottle has to run through the counter.
Common pharmacy workflow bottlenecks include:
- Not enough open registers
- Disorganized inventory or dispensary
- Not enough staff during high-demand hours
- Too many staff during low-demand hours
Strategy 4: Establish quality standards
Speed isn’t everything.
Your priority is providing the best possible care to your patients. And, creating a business patients trust matters more than efficiency.
A lack of established quality controls have caused major manufacturing accidents that either harmed people or ruined a product. In the end, the lack of quality killed the business. Efficiency didn’t matter.
Likewise, poor quality control at your pharmacy can result in slow service and wrong prescriptions. Patients will leave unsatisfied and are less likely to return to your pharmacy.
As you work to improve efficiency, you must balance quality controls along with it.
Establish a set of regulations, rules and systems that ensure the quality of your processes across all your operations and for all your employees.
Strategy 5: Upgrade to automation
Nothing has revolutionized manufacturing like automated technology. What once required 30 people now requires a single machine. What once was error-prone is now mistake-free.
A drastic improvement from the first assembly line, automation is the reason Ford can now supply $150 billion in vehicles all over the world.
The more you automate processes the more efficient you’ll work.
Nobody likes to replace people with machines. Your pharmacy can have the best of both. Instead of replacing employee jobs, automation frees your staff to focus on higher-level tasks that robots can’t perform.
Practice these manufacturing strategies to make your pharmacy more efficient than ever.
An Independently Owned Organization Serving Independent Pharmacies
PBA Health is dedicated to helping independent pharmacies reach their full potential on the buy side of their business. The company is a member-owned organization that serves independent pharmacies with group purchasing services, expert contract negotiations, proprietary purchasing tools, distribution services, and more.
PBA Health, an HDA member, operates its own VAWD-certified warehouse with more than 6,000 SKUs, including brands, generics, narcotics CII-CV, cold-storage products, and over-the-counter (OTC) products.
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