In warehousing and production, there is constant pressure on reducing costs. Additionally, as the orders are getting smaller, the number of operations to deliver these orders to the customers is increasing in number and complexity. Mitigating these supply chain challenges and helping organisations optimise and automate their internal supply chain processes, and reduce manual input to make things run faster and smoother is APS.

APS mainly focuses on producing software, whereas their partner companies take care of the technological plans for the organisation’s facility. Nevertheless, the company does assist in validating the projects and advises on how to make the solution better, for example, advice on changes that would add value to the solution. Once the end user chooses and confirms the solution, APS carries out software implementation activities following the guidelines for the validation of automated systems in the pharmaceutical industry prepared by the UK Pharmaceutical Industry Computer System Validation Forum and certified by the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry. These software implementation steps include—functional specification, conceptual project, database modelling, database setup, initial warehouse configuration, object parameterisation, test procedures preparation, and FAT (Factory Acceptance Test). Finally, the software is installed at the end user’s equipment with a site acceptance test at their environment. In addition, APS offers 24/7 support to ensure that the system runs smoothly.

APS solutions are built with the change in mind, that is, with the evolving technology they are aware that customer’s business need will also change. Hence, the company puts in a lot of effort and time to foresee where things might get wrong and how can they tackle the human as well as machine errors most efficiently.

Moreover, APS puts a lot of effort into the system understanding the physical environment that enables them to create and deliver smart solutions that are aware of the environment they operate and assist the customers in the supply chain process.

We put lots of efforts into every single project and try to be innovative as much as possible. We learn from past mistakes and try to improve ourselves and our software constantly

Apart from service consulting, APS offers their proprietary software solution NAS, a logistics information system, that combines the functionalities of classic WMS, WCS, MFC, and MES systems, while allowing full integration of material flows through the entire internal logistics system at the maximum level of processes automation and optimisation. Additionally, it controls versatile systems from small warehouses to large distribution centres and factories with numerous different subsystems from manual to automatic. NAS system can either be implemented as a standalone or can be integrated into the local and global environments taking the role of a host and/or subordinate system.

Further setting apart APS from its competitors in the supply chain space, is their size. Being small in size allows them to more flexible. Moreover, CEO at APS, Blaž Petelinkar, mentions, “We put lots of efforts into every single project and try to be innovative as much as possible. We learn from past mistakes and try to improve ourselves and our software constantly.” This working methodology of APS, allows them to deal with the emerging issues quickly and effectively.

Envisioning the future, APS aims to get more partner companies in the engineering field that would use NAS as their ILS (Integrated Logistics support) solution. While, on the other hand, they are continually evolving their internal engines to be more aware of the processes and to be able to predict the needed resources for individual tasks better. “We will continue to divide the system better to make the individual implementations faster and more reliable in terms of plug-ins that take care of project specifics in hardware and processes,” concludes Petelinkar.