Baptist Health South Florida Logo

Baptist Health South Florida ups the game on patient care with world class distribution

Baptist Health South Florida is an internationally recognized healthcare network and one of the largest not-for-profit healthcare providers in the region. Headquartered in Coral Gables, Florida, the Baptist Health network includes 12 hospitals and more than 150 physician practices and outpatient facilities spanning four counties.

In 2015, Baptist Health adopted a self-distribution strategy with a central distribution center serving its facilities to contain supply chain costs, reduce the amount of space used for inventory at hospitals and ultimately help provide better care. Baptist chose to implement the Lucas Warehouse Optimization Suite. The suite is powered through unique AI-based optimization that is embodied in Jennifer™ – the brains, orchestration engine and voice of the solution.

Optimizing picking through voice and work orchestration

Baptist was highly focused on optimizing the picking aspect of their operation, and decided they would focus on the voice picking aspect as a leading edge to maximizing productivity, accuracy and service.

“Our goal was to reduce the amount of manual work required for picking and other inventory operations. We’ve seen tremendous efficiency gains, elimination of all paper and extremely high throughput in terms of picking.”

Juan Serrato, AVP of Supply Chain Informatics

Productivity, Inventory Accuracy, and Predictability for Customers

Managing a volatile workforce during the pandemic

“Voice to pick was our starting point for this organization. Once we implemented it, our productivity increased dramatically. Prior to Lucas, we used to pick somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 to 80 lines per hour, and now we have people that are reaching 150.”

Dale Adamson, AVP of Supply Chain Services

Beyond the efficiency gains, Adamson pointed specifically to the benefits the Lucas Warehouse Optimization Suite was able to provide during the COVID-19 pandemic. “With COVID, we had people out repeatedly and they were out for an extended period of time,” he said. “We had no choice but to contract temporary labor to fill the gaps. It’s easy with Lucas because everything is voice-driven. If we had to go manual or use pen and paper, the onboarding process would have taken a lot longer.”

Because voice-directed processes are more intuitive for users, most Lucas customers find that a new associate can be trained and begin going solo in less than a day. This presents an incredible advantage when labor availability is at a premium, which was magnified exponentially during the pandemic.

Enabling on-floor workers to be their best

“Jennifer has enabled us to have better productivity, so we’re picking faster, we’re distributing faster, and in a time of need for our organization, we couldn’t have done it without her to be honest with you. We simply would not have been able to keep up with the volume.”

Benjamin Stilley, Member of the Baptist Replenishment Team

On-floor workers shared that Lucas played a critical role in the efficient delivery of supplies as well as keeping them accurate and making sure they were issuing the correct personal protective equipment, including masks, gowns and other necessary materials. Jennifer’s industry-leading voice recognition software also made the challenge of using voice technology while wearing a face mask during the work day, a non-issue.

Juan Serrato breaks it down to Baptist’s core mission and what is necessary for partners to help them succeed. “We pride ourselves in providing the best patient care possible, and having the right material, in the right place, at the right time is essential to that patient care. Lucas helps us do that.”

Improving Warehouse Operations Without Changing Inventory Systems