Medical Device Company Finds Supply Chain Efficiency with 3PL

Avanos Medical, Inc. is a medical device company delivering solutions that improve quality of life and help patients get back to the things that matter. Their road to a new distribution network began in 2018, when the company began its transformation into a pure-play medical device company. 

Avanos selected DHL Supply Chain, provider of contract logistics and part of Deutsche Post DHL Group, for its logistics management throughout the Avanos distribution network. Avanos reports achieving greater productivity and maximizing warehouse storage utilization for a wide range of medical devices since selecting DHL.

DHL’s offering includes 65,000 square feet of an existing multi-client facility in Las Vegas, NV, and a new 129,000-square-foot dedicated site in Southaven, MS. The new sites meet the strict quality assurance and regulatory requirements of medical devices to include duly licensed and temperature-controlled storage. Key to Avanos’ 2019 strategy, a compressed and accelerated implementation schedule was necessary to avoid potential conflicts with a parallel global ERP implementation. Both sites were implemented within eight weeks of each other and nearly four months ahead of schedule. 

The project includes innovative storage and vision-assisted picking technology to maximize the capacity of the distribution footprint, enable growth, and speed up the picking process while ensuring accuracy.

Joe Vidricksen, Vice President of Supply Chain for Avanos Medical, Inc. said, “We partnered with DHL Supply Chain because of their proven ability to provide greater efficiency, cost certainty, and enhanced customer service across our supply chain. Through their network and process design expertise, we are able to deploy several new and emerging technologies, which help us do what we really care about, providing life-saving products to our customers and their patients. DHL Supply Chain and Avanos have set a benchmark for partnerships between third-party logistics and medical device companies.”