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Case Study

How Shimadzu Increased Warehouse Efficiency by 50%

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Headland recently had a chat with Yvonne Brown, Inventory Controller at Shimadzu Australasia. We discussed the company, their success as well as their new storage system.

On-Time Service Delivery – The Key to Shimadzu’s Success

“Our customers are from a broad range of market sectors including pharmaceutical, clinical, environmental, food, & university. We provide scientific and medical instrumentation for a large range of applications including clinical diagnostics, product quality control, testing for environmental contaminants, and more,” said Yvonne.

Yvonne believes Shimadzu’s innovative technology, instrument reliability, and customer service and support is the key to their success. “Our success is based on high-quality and reliable instrumentation, which is backed by a high level of service and customer support, and our responsiveness to supply parts quickly around the country when required. We’ve just launched our new range, and we’re dedicated to keeping everything updated.”

Employed for 20 years at Shimadzu, Yvonne explained her role: “I focus on logistics, administration, warehousing, and purchasing of new products, ensuring on-time delivery for our customers, liaising with freight forwarders and managing stocktakes.”

The Headland Connection

Shimadzu purchased a Hanel LeanLift from Headland recently. “We use the LeanLift for all our hardware spare parts & consumable products. This includes all the instrumentation maintenance parts and electronic boards, for servicing our equipment,” Yvonne said.

Yvonne Brown with Shimadzu’s new Hanel LeanLift

The LeanLift has allowed Shimadzu to increase its warehouse efficiency. “It saves space in our warehouse and maximises the use of our space. The best part is the reduction in picking errors and increased efficiencies. There has been 40% to 50% saving of time, with order picking and error rate reduction. Another advantage is that it has help with stock control as only our warehouse and inventory staff have access,” Yvonne explained.

Other Shimadzu staff with their new Hanel LeanLift.

Quality at Heart and Innovation in Mind – Shimadzu’s Science and Technology

Shimadzu provides analytical and measuring instruments and industrial machinery. Their products are for a variety of applications for many industries.

Genzo Shimadzu founded Shimadzu in 1875 in Kyoto. Over 140 years, it has evolved in Scientific and Medical fields to the present day. In each decade, they have developed technological breakthroughs. Distributor operations begun in Australia in 1969 and continues to grow. Expansion into the Pacific Region and New Zealand followed. Shimadzu started with five colleagues in 1991 in Sydney and Melbourne. Now there are over 100 staff with 7 offices covering all states of Australia and New Zealand.

Each Shimadzu office has a full complement of trained sales staff, service engineers and application chemists. The main Sydney warehouse keeps a full range of instruments, spare parts, and consumables.

Shimadzu covers the whole spectrum of analytical instrumentation consisting of:

  • chromatography (HPLC, GC)
  • mass spectrometry (LC-MS, GC-MS, MALDI-TOF MS)
  • spectroscopy (UV/VIS, FTIR, AAS, ICP)
  • environmental testing (TOC)
  • weighing technologies (balances)
  • testing machines

Their analytical instruments are ideal for:

  • chemical
  • pharmaceutical and biotechnology laboratories
  • clinical testing
  • environmental
  • the food and semiconductor industry
  • research and development; and
  • process and quality control.

The creative talent of Shimadzu’s scientists and engineers developed the product range. These include Genzo Shimadzu Jr who is one of Japan’s ten greatest ever inventors. As well as Koichi Tanaka, who won the 2002 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Shimadzu produces globally according to acknowledged quality standards. Shimadzu enable their customers to work according to GLP, GMP, FDA, and standard methods.

They also provide medical systems. These are for medical diagnostic and treatment applications. As well as new drug research and development applications. These systems support doctors and researchers in an ever-increasing range of applications.

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