Today, we learned that 15 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine were ruined when ingredients for Astra Zeneca were mistakenly mixed into the J&J doses.
This is a dramatic example of something that happens every day in wellness and pharmaceutical manufacturing. Typically, it’s something a bit less catastrophic than the destruction of a critical vaccine. Instead, it might look something like putting a slightly lower quality ingredient in a supplement, but nonetheless the impact and expense is material. Not only can this type of production blunder be a financial hit due to the loss of large amounts of product, the damage to an organization’s reputation can cause reduced sales and financial challenges far into the future. Once that consumer trust is lost, it’s an uphill battle to get it back.
One of the great features of ParityWellness that we don’t often talk about, is that the system has checks in place that prevent workers from scanning the wrong ingredients into a production process. Most often used to enforce FIFO or LIFO, the production runs in ParityWellness also manage the Bill of Materials. If a user attempts to scan out ingredients for a production run that aren’t on the BOM, the system will push out an error warning them specifically that the ingredient is not a part of the formula.
The same feature that prevents users from using the wrong ingredients also eliminates miss-ships. Because the software is often integrated with the user’s ERP platform, it’s able to import open sales orders and trucks are loaded against that information. If workers attempt to scan more or different products to a shipment that are not reflected on the Sales Order, ParityWellness will display an error message and prevent loading.
It’s a small feature, but it has a big impact on our customers operations. And in this case, at least, would’ve prevented a mistake that wiped out millions and millions of vaccine doses. If you’re interested in learning more about how ParityWellness WMS helps processors mitigate risks both large and small, reach out today for a free demo with our team of wellness industry professionals.