The FDA asks for a full chain-of-custody on one lot — you spend a week digging through three systems plus a stack of paper.
Pharma & Medical Devices
You distribute pharmaceuticals or medical devices — one mismatched lot number can trigger a recall. Compliance is not a cost; it is your license to operate.
The three biggest headaches
Serial numbers live in Excel — ship one wrong box of high-value consumables and the recovery freight costs more than the goods.
Temperature loggers get downloaded every three months — by the time you spot an excursion, the whole lot has to be written off.
Recommended apps, in rollout order
- WMS · WarehousingPhone-guided receiving, putaway, picking, packing, shipping, and counts — mistakes blocked at every step.
- Purchase · PurchasingFrom request to approved PO to planned arrival — no more guessing what’s coming in.
- Documents · DocumentsEvery app stores its files here: standardized, searchable, with quotas.
A typical day
- 1
Morning: inbound scan captures lot, expiry, and serial numbers in one pass — cold-chain handoff records auto-file under that lot.
- 2
Midday: outbound verifies by lot AND serial — scan the wrong unit and the system locks the order. Mispicks drop to zero.
- 3
Afternoon: a hospital requests the full trace on one reagent lot — three minutes to export: purchasing, receiving, temperature logs, outbound, end to end.
- 4
Before clock-out: the expiry watchlist auto-generates — everything expiring within 180 days listed, return-and-exchange plan already scheduled.