High Street Pharmacy, Willoughby, Sydney, NSW

Retail trading space was created from dispensary storage space in the High Street Pharmacy, Willoughby (Sydney) by replacing old style E-bay shelving with StockFlow shelving.

The old dispensary design had dated E-Bay narrow shelving. The floor area occupied by this shelving was 23sqm and projected 1.8m from the back wall into the dispensary and thus pushed the dispensary this distance into the retail area of the pharmacy. A floor plan is provided in Diagram 1.

Diagram 1. Old dispensary with E-bay shelving

The redesign brief to Bruce Eadie of Pharmacy Interiors was to expand and streamline the display space in the retail area of the pharmacy as it was a high trading pharmacy of only 90sqm. Provision also had to be made for a service area at both the rear of the pharmacy and at the front.

The retail display shelving was expanded by replacing the three angled gondolas with two rows of straight gondola runs.

Dispensary stock usage analysis (see bottom of this article) revealed the stock storage requirements for the 1,133 products would be 120.7 linear metres of dispensary shelf space. The stock storage for these items was provided by five 800mm wide StockFlow shelving bays. The high volume items were stored in back filling CombiTrays trays and the low volume items in sectionised pull-out shelves. Straight shelving was used for large items. The total shelf space is now 146.6 linear metres.

The retail display floor area was expanded by replacing the dated dispensary stock storage shelving with space saving Sintek StockFlow storage systems. This shelving system reduced the dispensary stock storage area from 9.72sqm to 1.8sqm and the projection of the stock storage and dispensary into the retail area from 1.8m to 450mm.

Thus 10% more retail floor space was created by making the dispensary stock storage more space efficient. See Diagram 2.

Diagram 2. New and smaller dispensary with StockFlow shelving

Commenting on the design, pharmacist/manager Andrew Topp said:

“Our front of shop turnover had more than doubled in two years, so we needed space to make the shop feel uncluttered. At the same time dispensary functionality and workflow had to be improved in order to cope with the expected growth in dispensary turnover.

“The StockFlow system has done the job fantastically; it is easy to set up and use, allows more room to move in the dispensary, increases efficiency with the ‘fast movers’ section, and has allowed us to open up the front of shop. It also results in fewer missed prescriptions because we can hold more stock of the ‘fast movers’.”

Despite the compact size of the dispensary there is ample working space

Andrew Topp demonstrates the ease of pulling stock from the StockFlow shelving along the back of the dispensary

Dispensary Usage Analysis

The analysis conducted by Efficient Dispensary Designs involved dispensary product numbers and usage rates as shown in Table 1. From previous studies conducted by Efficient Dispensary Designs, products are graded on frequency of dispensing. The results of this analysis are shown in Table 2.