Implementing Lean Manufacturing and SLP tools to reduce order errors in a pharmaceutical warehouse in Peru

Abstract

The storage of pharmaceutical products is often complex, as multiple factors can determine whether a product can be sold to customers or must be discarded. It is here where the everyday problems of a warehouse are usually aggravated, as it would be the disorder in the aisles, poor distribution of work areas, poor handling of products or misreading of orders, causing unnecessary reprocessing, a request for time in tasks that do not add value to the product and above all an over cost in warehouse activities. Therefore, the following research proposes the application of the 5S, Standardized Work, and SLP or Systematic Layout Planning tools so that the problems present in the warehouse to be investigated are mitigated. A preliminary diagnosis was made to the warehouse to determine the primary and secondary causes of the problem, where it was found that there was a high percentage of errors in the orders of 6.59%, so then we proceeded to the implementation of the tools through a pilot test and a simulation performed in the Arena software to corroborate the results. In the end, an analysis of the proposed indicators was carried out, where a reduction in order errors of up to 2.36% was observed.