Medline has launched a fulfillment system called Pick Pack Pro at its distribution center in Montgomery, N.Y., marking a significant investment in advanced automation to support its health plan customers, including providers that administer Medicare benefits. Medline engineered Pick Pack Pro to help with orders that are pulled from a smaller range of products at high order volumes. Unlike traditional distribution models that support thousands of products, health plan orders typically draw from a more select catalog of medical supply items for everyday use, such as over-the-counter medications, heating pads and compression socks.
Plan members purchase these items inside specific ordering timeframes. This ordering pattern creates intense fulfillment spikes throughout the year, followed by more consistent volume during the remainder of that year. Pick Pack Pro integrates optimized order batching, robotic sortation and automated packing and shipping to address the challenge of maintaining delivery times and order accuracy inherent in serving health plans and their members.
The system is expected to allow Medline to improve accuracy and speed of delivery to health plan members, an important part of serving customers who are health plan providers. The Montgomery installation was developed with three key vendors and represents the first capital and staffing investment in this technology from Medline. Pick Pack Pro utilizes Tompkins Robotics to sort and route order items, Trew for integrated movement and sortation of order cartons throughout the system, and Ranpak's sustainable automated packing solutions for right-size packaging and shipping.
Medline plans to deploy Pick Pack Pro to other locations throughout its network of 45 distribution centers across the U.S.
