Abbott Laboratories Speeds Up Its Product Distribution With Help From LXE

The installation of a completely new wireless network supplied by LXE has allowed Abbott Laboratories — one of the world's leading health care companies — to significantly reduce delivery lead times.

Abbott's production site in the capital city of the Dutch province of Overijssel has manufactured highquality food products for infants and medical applications for more than 200 years. The food products are packaged in liquid or powder form in cans, plastic bottles and tetrapak cartons. The company's distribution specialist, Abbott Logistics, then distributes and sells the products in more than 130 countries worldwide in Europe, Latin America and Asia.

In order to track and register all movements of goods into and out of the warehouse and the consumption of materials in production, Abbott Laboratories B.V. decided to implement a major improvement program.

LXE concluded all pallets, cartons, or bags of incoming raw materials and packaging materials were to be given a unique label to allow internal tracking. This label carried a unique Code128 bar code that appended to all the data about that pallet, carton, or bag in the bar code system: product description, use by date, batch number, and pallet/carton/bag number.