This research has designed and developed an integrated supply chain management (SCM) system for optimizing inventory control
and reducing material handling costs of pharmaceutical products in healthcare sector. The supply chain in this work is composed
of pharmaceutical companies, a wholesaler, and hospitals. At first, we have analyzed hospital’s business processes and reviewed
system requirements for the efficient supply chain management. VMI (Vendor-Managed Inventory), which is one of important applications
of SCM, has been adopted and implemented to improve material handling efficiency. Online procurement system is also developed
for the departments that consume drugs and place orders. Besides, real time information sharing functionalities are provided
for optimizing inventory control of pharmaceuticals. The developed SCM system enables hospitals to improve the procurement
processes and inventory control of pharmaceutical products, which results in decreasing total inventory more than 30%. By
sharing information with hospitals, the wholesaler can gather more timely and exact data about inventory status and drug usage
volumes of hospitals, so it can forecast the demand more accurately, which enables needed products to be supplied timely and
cost-effectively. With the SCM system, total supply chain cost of pharmaceutical products has been decreased significantly.