Customer Stories
McKesson Optimizes Labor Across Its Healthcare Distribution Network
About
- Fortune 500 healthcare distribution leader
- Distributes pharmaceuticals, medical supplies & healthcare products
- One of the most complex DC environments in North America
- High-compliance, high-accuracy fulfillment requirements
Results
- Real-time labor visibility across complex, high-SKU healthcare DC operations
- Predictive staffing adjustments ahead of volume shifts
- Improved SLA attainment for hospital and pharmacy delivery windows
- Labor cost reduction without headcount increases
“CognitOps gives our operations team the real-time visibility we need to make smarter labor decisions — without overhauling the systems we already have.”
— McKesson Distribution Operations Leadership
Challenge
Healthcare distribution is one of the most operationally complex environments in warehousing. McKesson’s distribution centers manage thousands of SKUs across pharmaceutical, medical-surgical, and consumer health categories — each with different handling requirements, compliance standards, and fulfillment SLAs. With hospital and pharmacy deliveries on the line, even small labor planning gaps translate directly into patient care risk and customer attrition.
The core challenge: McKesson’s existing WMS provided strong transactional data, but lacked the real-time labor intelligence needed to make proactive staffing decisions. Operations managers were making critical workforce allocation decisions based on historical reports rather than live throughput signals — leaving them reactive in an environment where being proactive is essential.
Solution
CognitOps ALIGN was deployed as an intelligence layer on top of McKesson’s existing WMS infrastructure — requiring no system replacement and going live within the target implementation window. The platform immediately began surfacing real-time labor utilization, throughput-by-function visibility, and predictive SLA risk signals that McKesson’s operations leadership could act on in real time.
With CognitOps, shift managers gained a live operational picture across receiving, put-away, picking, packing, and shipping — enabling dynamic labor rebalancing based on actual order flow rather than static shift plans. Predictive demand orchestration allowed teams to get ahead of inbound volume spikes before they impacted downstream fulfillment.
Outcome
By layering CognitOps ALIGN over its existing WMS, McKesson’s distribution operations gained the real-time labor intelligence needed to make faster, smarter staffing decisions — improving throughput, protecting SLAs, and reducing labor costs across its healthcare DC network.
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Schedule a DemoLearn more about CognitOps’ approach to healthcare distribution center optimization.
Why Healthcare Distribution Labor Planning Is Different
Healthcare distribution carries a level of operational consequence that most warehouse environments don’t face. When McKesson fulfills an order for a hospital pharmacy, a missed SLA doesn’t result in a customer complaint — it can result in a patient care disruption. This reality shapes every aspect of how McKesson’s distribution centers must operate: staffing decisions need to be proactive, not reactive; productivity gaps need to be caught in real time, not discovered after the fact in an end-of-shift report.
The scale of McKesson’s operations compounds this complexity. As a Fortune 6 company and one of the largest pharmaceutical distributors in North America, McKesson manages distribution centers with some of the highest SKU density and order accuracy requirements in the industry. Pharmaceutical pick paths follow strict handling protocols. Temperature-sensitive products require zone-specific workflows. Controlled substance management adds regulatory compliance requirements on top of standard fulfillment operations. In this environment, even a 2-3% labor imbalance across a shift can cascade into downstream SLA risk that is difficult to recover from.
The Gap Between WMS Transactions and Real-Time Labor Intelligence
McKesson’s existing WMS infrastructure was built to track inventory movement — what came in, where it was placed, what was picked, what shipped. It excelled at this. What it wasn’t designed to do was answer the questions that a shift supervisor asks a hundred times during a shift: Where is my labor right now? Which zones are falling behind pace? Do I have enough throughput in receiving to support the afternoon pick wave? Am I going to miss the 5pm hospital delivery window if I don’t rebalance now?
These questions require a different kind of data — not transactional records of what happened, but live signals about what is happening and predictive indicators of what is about to happen. CognitOps ALIGN was built specifically to answer them, sitting above the WMS layer and synthesizing real-time throughput, labor utilization, and workload data into actionable operational intelligence.
Implementation Without Disruption
One of the critical requirements for any technology deployment in a healthcare distribution environment is implementation without operational disruption. McKesson could not afford a months-long go-live process that required its distribution centers to slow down, retrain staff on entirely new systems, or absorb technology risk during peak fulfillment periods.
CognitOps ALIGN connected to McKesson’s existing WMS via standard APIs — the same integration approach used across all CognitOps deployments. No rip-and-replace. No infrastructure changes. The platform went live within the target implementation window and began surfacing real-time operational data immediately, without requiring McKesson to change its core warehouse workflows.
Related Resources
- Healthcare Distribution Center Optimization — Learn how CognitOps serves the healthcare DC market
- Warehouse ROI Calculator — Estimate your potential savings on labor costs
- Labor Planning Guide — Complete guide to optimizing warehouse labor efficiency
