Inventory management framework to drug receiving project at a local drug store

Abstract

A mental health problem in Thailand tends to grow over the year. The increasing of psychiatric patients causes hospital congestion and complexity of medication accessing including Suanprung Hospital in Chiang Mai province. Thus, the hospital has developed a new project to set a local drugstore as a dispensing for patients instead of the hospital. Inventory control is the key to the success of this project. Inventory cost is a significant factor of concern. The data of drug expenditure is collected from surveys and interviews of the pharmacists. Then, ABC-VED analysis is applied to the overview of the inventorying process. After that, a framework for inventory management is proposed. As a result, the analysis can help to categories the drug priority which required frequent monitoring, Practical framework and inventory cost reduction are the expected results. Future research to testing a result, the simulation process can provide the analysis and development of the logistics operation model in a project to reduce the workload of pharmacists in hospitals and develop an operating procedure in the project.