ZETES CASE STUDY |Air Liquide

Planning and traceability

Using an integrated on-board solution developed by ZETES, the Belgian branch of Air Liquide Medical recently adopted a fully automated system to plan and manage its medical home care services, including a GPS route planning solution in its vehicles.

Air Liquide was created more than 100 years ago from an important invention: the liquefaction of air allowing the separation of its different components (oxygen, nitrogen, argon, etc.). Today the Group is the world’s largest supplier of oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen and countless other gases and related services for the health care sector and most industries.

A powerful local presence
Air Liquide combines the resources and experience of a global enterprise with a powerful local presence based on independent customer-focused teams. Started in 1906, the Belgian activities are centred around 4 units:

• Air Liquide Industries Belgium produces industrial gases in large volumes and supplies them to the different gasconsuming industries (chemical, metal, glass, refining, etc.) in the Benelux through its more than 2,700 km long pipeline network
• Air Liquide Belgium is organised in laboratories and industrial gas conditioning centres and supplies it’s products in cylinders (gas) or by truck (liquid). The marketing is ensured by 2 Client Service Centres backed up by a network of
  approximately 300 distributors
• Air Liquide Welding specialises in welding equipment and consumables
• Air Liquide Medical supervises 2 activities:
  Home care under the brand name VitalAire (global services tailored to the needs of the patients: oxygen therapy, ventilation, sleep apnoea, drips …
  Healthcare and services for hospitals through the supply of medical gases, equipment and related services.
   
  

Medicines and services
“Added value and a flawless service are two important characteristics of our offer,” says Air Liquide Medical General Manager for the Benelux, Daniel Defechereux. “In 1997 our medical gases officially became ‘medicines’ in Belgium. This new status immediately revolutionised our activity, particularly the production, which was soon centralised on one location: a pharmaceutical establishment complying with the strictest standards in force with regard to production, packaging, monitoring, traceability and distribution. “Before, we were only responsible for supplying a raw material in a storage medium. Now we supply a medicine that we are pharmaceutically responsible for until it enters the hospital’s distribution network. But our service offer goes well beyond supplying gases. We equally outsource our staff to manage our products on-site, install certified distribution systems meeting all CE standards, carry out technical inspections, offer distance management, etc.”

Home healthcare: VitalAire
In 1990 Air Liquide Belgium launched a new service in the field of Home Care when the company started to supply and install oxygen at people’s homes. The product was supplied in adapted media: cylinders with gaseous oxygen, portable liquid oxygen containers, oxygen concentrators, and medical devices. Daniel Defechereux: “Again, Air Liquide Medical does not content itself with merely delivering the product. We provide the full package of medical home care services, based on the prescriptions of doctors or, in case of more comprehensive therapies, of certified specialist lung centres.
Pharmacies and/or these centres do not always have the necessary means to provide the required products and equipment themselves. That is why they turn to us for the delivery, installation and putting into service of the equipment and products prescribed to the patient. We attend to the complete management of these installations for the full duration of the therapy. This fairly complex activity includes following up the delivery addresses, moving the installations (for holidays,…) and collecting them at the end of the therapy, etc., and not to forget tracing every single piece of equipment.”

Optimisation of the daily rounds
Air Liquide Medical receives several hundreds of Home Care orders a day. These are processed to draw up rounds that will be assigned to the delivery vehicles the next day.
“In the beginning the deliverers planned their visits themselves, which resulted in them starting their round later and which did not always yield optimal results. Using road maps to find their exact destinations, they often had to stop their cars, thus increasing the risk of being involved in an accident.”
Always looking to improve the quality and the efficiency of its services, Air Liquide Medical decided to look for a fully automated solution for the planning, management and piloting of the rounds. After having studied the different systems availably on the market, Air Liquide opted for a global solution and entrusted ZETES with its development. “We chose ZETES because they had by far the most experience in all the aspects involved in developing and implementing the solution.”