During spring of 2010, the Capital Region of Denmark decided to gather cleaning, packing and sterilization of surgical instruments in two regional centers at Herlev Hospital and Rigshospitalet – and with a MES solution delivered by CGI.
The decision was based on preceding analyses of the existing treatment units’ quality that showed in many places there was a need for a qualitative leap if the new guidelines within the area had to be complied with.
In order to make the workflow around the two Central Sterile Services Departments (CSSD), Regional Sterilcentral Herlev (RSH) and Regional Sterilcentral Rigshospitalet (RSR) more efficient, it was decided to build two distribution centers to handle receipt and dispatch of goods to and from the central sterile services departments.
The process of these distribution centers and CSSDs is automated by robots for loading and unloading of storage goods, AGVs (transport robots) and others. Besides the transport of sterile goods, the distribution centers are dimensioned to handle the general transport of other goods to and from the hospital. These goods include medicine, linen, uniforms, waste, post, other transit goods and, in the long term, also food.
The two CSSDs are to supply the other hospitals in the region with surgical equipment so the equipment will be in the right place at the start of the work day.
The total solution, outlined below, has been divided according to contract areas to where the Capital Region of Denmark has decided to enter contracts.
From goods receipt, SAP system or the sterile system, the MES system will receive information about objects in the distribution centers that must be distributed within the hospital, or sent by external transport to one of the region’s other hospitals.
The MES system calculates an optimized detailed plan to ensure that the object in question will arrive at the requested receiving station at the agreed time. The plan will take into account the type of object that needs transportation, the expected transport time and the capacity of the facility.
The MES system must ensure that the objects in question will arrive at the right time, and not too early, as the objects consequently will accumulate at the receiving stations.
The MES system will then start the execution of the plan by initiating the necessary production orders in the underlying technical systems. All units of the facility have been identified by an RFID tag so that the MES system is constantly updated with the location and can report when the object in question has reached its destination.
If errors are found within the physical facility, a re-planning happens, taking the error in question into account, is to be made immediately.
CGI’s solution is based on the use of relevant industrial standards and best practice from the production industry, and from the start, the Region has emphasized that the system should be built by using components that are widespread and well-known on the Danish market.
CGI has chosen to base the solution on Wonderware MES from Schneider Group that is the most widely used MES platform on the Danish market. To handle the detailed planning, the product Simio is used. Simio represents a completely new generation of detailed planning and scheduling that calculates an optimal plan for execution, based on a simulated model of the facility. Planning and re-planning are carried out dynamically and does constantly take into account the condition and the current load of the facility.
The solution also meets the region's needs to handle prioritized orders e.g. for emergency operations.