Cardinal Health this dedicated to the supply of goods and distribution services to more than 800 clients of the hospital industry from its 4 distribution centers in Australia. Due to the nature of its products, the level of service to its customers must be very high in terms of time and ordered quantities, in fact on many occasions with very short delivery times of up to one day. Says Tony Johnson Logistics Manager of Cardinal Health for Australia and New Zealand. In addition to this many of the products that are supplied are imported, have Lead times of at least three months and physical characteristics (lightweight but Voluminosos), they do completely unfeasible your shipment by air given the high cost. Its product range includes more than 700 sterilised packaging, which are made-to-stock according to the customer’s specifications. These products are manufactured in Sydney where are imported and then stored locally on one of the four centers of distribution according to the proximity of the customer where needed. Requirements forecast they are relatively simple since only need to predict at a level within the supply chain.

However it is imperative that the level of accuracy in the forecast is very high given the specific characteristics of the sector, as a break from inventory in this kind of products is unacceptable. Within the operation are also imported more than 800 end products which are stored in all distribution centers. At this point requirements of the prognosis becomes a little more complex because it is necessary to forecast the sales of each product by Centre of distribution and decide the amount of product to buy at a consolidated level and the amount of product to store in each of of the C.Ds. Finally there are more than 300 products which are generally sent directly to the client, these products are purchased only against the customer’s order.