Leading Pharmaceutical Company Uses RFID To Improve Inventory Visibility

Hanmi Pharmaceutical, a subsidiary of Hanmi Group, is a Korean manufacturer and supplier of pharmaceutical products in over 40 countries around the world. Founded in 1973, Hanmi is a leading pharmaceutical company in South Korea, with annual revenue of $558 million in 2008.

Hanmi's products are dispersed amongst hundreds of pharmacies throughout South Korea. Prior to their adoption of RFID it was difficult for the manufacturer to have much visibility over store inventory levels at any given time. In order to know when products needed to be replenished, Hanmi had to rely on manual, labor-intensive stock taking at each pharmacy, a process which was neither frequent nor 100% accurate. Hanmi needed more accurate, real time stock level information to improve circulation throughout their supply chain and chose RFID for the solution.

RFID not only solves Hanmi's circulation challenges, it meets government mandates and improves health safety throughout the country. In South Korea, the pharmaceutical industry struggles with the illegal production and sale of counterfeit and substandard drugs. Because the country is only able to recover around 20% of these illicit pharmaceutical products, the Korean government recommended RFID to combat this growing and dangerous problem, mandating that 50% of all pharmaceutical products be RFID tagged by 2015.