Keeping the supply chain flowing with the 6610Q
Established in 1978 as United Pharmacists Ltd., Procurity Inc. is the purchasing, distribution, and marketing arm for a network of pharmacies across Canada. Entirely owned by independent pharmacists under the banners of CounterWise Drug Marts and CounterCare Pharmacies, the company has member stores located throughout Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Northwestern Ontario.
Procurity’s distribution centers in Winnipeg, Regina, Calgary and Edmonton ship product to independent pharmacies, buying groups and chains across Western Canada. A key member of the IT team responsible for the administration of those branch distribution centers is Kathy MacKinnon who is based at Procurity’s headquarters operation in Winnipeg. She explains that the print activity of the organization centers primarily around product pick lists and customer invoicing of the pharmaceutical products.
Procurity has relied upon the TallyGenicom 6212 in all of its distribution centers and they have been used for high volume printing of invoices, pick slips and credit notes. So when Kathy received the 6610Q in Winnipeg, the company’s highest volume center, she thought about where it might best be used and the decision was made to deploy it as the primary invoice printer, even though she was pleased with its performance after testing on the other applications.
“Four to five shipments per day are sent out of Winnipeg to customers. Our policy is to ship every order with an invoice and quite often couriers will be waiting on the invoices which print just prior to shipping. We certainly don’t need couriers waiting for a print job to complete.”
“I have little time to deal with paper jams so the fact that it just takes a minute to correct it on the 6610Q, with the one tractor feed design, is important to the efficiency of our operation,” explained MacKinnon. “Our order desk staff – who are primarily charged with clearing paper jams – can’t handle lengthy fixes.” MacKinnon is very aware of the pitfalls of lost time, particularly when couriers are patiently waiting.
Not insignificant either is the fact that a paper jam on the 6212 could mean the loss of up to 20 pages of paper. MacKinnon thinks the new tractor design will decrease waste and costs associated with jam clearance. Another benefit she added regarding the output is the solid metal guide feed for stacking – a definite advantage over a cage structure. “We can now count on the forms stacking more neatly and with faster accessibility,” she explained.
Taking a step back while watching shipments go out the door, MacKinnon commented, “The speed at which we produce about 3000 invoices a day is the most critical element to us and since we had been running the 6212 at 1200 lines per minutes and now are using the 6610Q at 1000 lines per minute, I was pleased that the level appears comparable even with the new printer running at a reduced level. I don’t expect we’ll have any couriers lined up anytime soon waiting on the printer.”
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