Customer story • picking efficiency

From two systems to one, automation and Bitlog WMS

Apohem is one of Sweden's fastest-growing online pharmacies, running high-volume e-commerce out of its own warehouse near Stockholm. After bringing warehouse management in-house on Bitlog WMS, the team hit a one-year target of order lines picked per hour in four months. Now, they are looking forward to the next step: automation.

Apohems warehouse team uses Bitlog WMS on tablets to pick and pack orders
+45%
picking efficiency gain
4 months
to hit one-year goal
25,000+
items in stock
Video

See inside Apohem's warehouse, and hear how they scaled picking efficiency

Anette Mühlbach, Chief Supply Chain Officer
Therese Mella, Head of Supply Chain Development

“Before Bitlog we encountered operational challenges with reliability and scaling up in volume.”

Anette Mühlbach
Anette Mühlbach Chief Supply Chain Officer, Apohem
About apohem

As demand skyrocketed, the warehouse had to keep pace, without ever going down

Apohem is a Swedish online pharmacy on a mission to make health and skincare accessible to everyone, without it being costly or complicated. It's also one of Sweden's fastest-growing e-commerce businesses, handling prescription management alongside more than 25,000 items in stock.

After bringing fulfillment in-house from a previous 3PL provider, first from its own 4,000m² warehouse in Årsta outside Stockholm, demand climbed fast. Today Apohem runs from a 25,000m² site in Kallhäll, north of Stockholm, built to carry that growth and the volume still ahead.

 

BItlog wms customer apohem uses proposal planner to prioritize picking queues
The challenges

One warehouse, two systems, no room to slow down

Bringing fulfillment in-house exposed the limits of a split setup that couldn't keep up with Apohem's growth.

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Split across two systems

Prescriptions were handled internally; everything else sat with a 3PL on a separate WMS. Orders were picked in different systems and different parts of the warehouse making consolidation was difficult.

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Reliability non-negotiable

Apohem delivers fast, especially on prescription medication. As a licensed pharmacy, downtime is a compliance risk, not just an operational inconvenience.

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Volume outran the setup

As demand climbed, scaling inventory management became difficult. The old setup couldn't absorb the volume without efficiency slipping.

The Solution

Proven on the floor, then the deal was sealed

One thing that set Bitlog apart during the selection process was a hands-on reference visit. Apohem's team went to a Bitlog customer's warehouse and ran real work, picking and packing with the same tools they'd use day to day.

Two requirements shaped the decision:

  1. As a pharmacy, Apohem needs full traceability on every transaction.

  2. And with two weekday shifts plus weekend production, the system had to be quick to learn and reliable around the clock.


However, the ultimate deciding factor was partnership. Apohem didn't just want software, they wanted a vendor that would keep building alongside it.

Bitlog WMS meets Apohems pharmacy traceability requirements on all transations. Warehouse worker pictured.
Key features

How Bitlog works across Apohem's warehouse

Apohem runs Bitlog WMS, integrated with multiple systems and hardware such as AutoStore and pack automation.

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Proposal Planner

Feature co-developed with Apohem, it prioritizes picking queues by criteria like cut-off time, order placement time, and carrier, so the right orders move first.

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automation

Automation

AutoStore goods-to-person robots, pack automation, and conveyor belts run under one system, keeping picking and order flow fast as volume grows.

AutoStore
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Real-time data & open APIs

Clear, robust APIs let Apohem work with live order data across its operation, no lag between what happened and what the system knows.

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Full transaction traceability

Every movement is logged, meeting the traceability requirements and laws a pharmacy is held to.

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“As a pharmacy, we need traceability in all our transactions, and it also needs to be quick to get started with picking orders.”

Therese Mella
Therese Mella Head of Supply Chain Development, Apohem
Proposal Planner

The right order at the right time

In a high-volume pharmacy, the hard part isn't picking a single order fast. It's deciding which order to pick next, order after order, as cut-offs approach and carriers wait. Apohem and Bitlog built the Proposal Planner to solve exactly that.

Instead of a picker choosing, the system sequences the queue by cut-off time, order placement, and carrier, so work flows in the order that actually keeps deliveries on time. It's a feature born from Apohem's floor, and it's part of why picking efficiency climbed the way it did.

More about Proposal Planner

“When we started working with Bitlog WMS, we set a goal of 100 order lines picked per hour within a year. We achieved that in four months.”

Anette Mühlbach
Anette Mühlbach Chief Supply Chain Officer, Apohem
The results

The one-year plan, done in four months

The goal was 100 order lines per hour within a year. Here's where Apohem landed, and what each number means on the floor.

speed

45% above picking target

Apohem picks 145 order lines per hour on average, against a target of 100, in the same operation.

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4 months to hit 1-year goal

The target of 100 order lines per hour, set for year one, was reached in a third of the time. Now they aim even higher.

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25,000+ unique items

The catalog Bitlog WMS keeps traceable and pickable, across automation, goods-to-person and prescriptions.

the wins

How did Bitlog WMS improve picking at Apohem?

Bringing warehouse management in-house on Bitlog WMS turned Apohem's split, hard-to-scale setup into one system that plans and prioritizes the day for it.

The clearest proof is picking efficiency: a one-year goal of 100 order lines per hour, reached in four months, and today Apohem picks 45% above target on average. Because Bitlog was quick to learn, Apohem could scale volume without the reliability worries of its old arrangement, and stay live across two weekday shifts and weekend production.

The co-developed Proposal Planner keeps the picking queue sequenced by cut-off, order time, and carrier, so deliveries stay on schedule as demand grows. With a 25,000 m² site and a shared roadmap, Apohem's warehouse automation has room to keep expanding on Bitlog.

Bitlog WMS consilodates apohem's regular orders and pharmacy orders into one shipment.
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Throughput unlocked

From a hoped-for rate to 140–145 order lines per hour, with headroom to spare. Apohem picks far more than it planned for, on the same floor.

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Fast to productive

Bitlog was quick to learn and quick to run, letting Apohem scale volume across day and weekend shifts without reliability trade-offs.

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Built together, built to grow

The Proposal Planner came out of Apohem's own operation, one example of a partnership with a clear roadmap into the next warehouse.

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