How To Put Stock In Pharmacy Shelves?

Shelving is very important in a pharmacy. Once you’ve installed your modular pharmacy shelves they can be customised any way you like. However, the way that you stock your shelves is just as important as the shelves themselves.

For both front-of-house (the customer area) and back-of-house (typically inaccessible to customers), shelves need to be organised in an efficient way.

Stocking Shelves Front-Of-House

Shelving design and stocking shelves go hand in hand. We’ve already touched on the best practice modular shelving designs in our pharmacy shelves design blog. But to reiterate, the most important aspect of the front-of-house stock is its accessibility.

One of the ways we recommend keeping stock front-of-house accessible is to use auto feed drawers. These drawers are angled towards customers, meaning products slide to the front when one is removed. This improves the efficiency of putting stock in shelves front-of-house;

Stock Location

Another way to improve stocking front-of-house is to place the stock that needs selling at eye level. This means that while customers are waiting for their prescriptions they have time to browse products. Just remember that eye level is not the same for everyone, especially in a pharmacy.

Overall, a modular storage system helps you change up front-of-house stocking to suit your needs. If you notice wheelchair users tend to need certain products, make sure to place them at a lower height. In turn, expensive and less essential products can be placed on higher shelves.

The secret of how to put stock in pharmacy shelves front-of-house lies in knowing the needs of your clientele. If you’re still struggling try placing a suggestion box on the counter and see what your customers have to say.

Stocking Shelves Back-Of-House

The most important aspect of stocking pharmacy shelves back-of-house is efficiency. In this context ‘efficiency’ means;

Making sure medications are easy to find,
Making sure medications are quick to find,
Making sure your shelving layout is easy to understand and learn.

There are different methods to achieve this; from vertical storage to alphabetizing products. Modular pharmacy shelving encourages adapting your back-of-house shelving to best suit the space, and needs of your pharmacists. However, maintaining a shelving visual that’s easy to read is essential.

Organise Your Storage System

What this means is you should be able to look at your pharmacy shelving and tell what is where. This is beneficial as if you can see when you’re running low on stock, you’re able to order more before you run out. In turn, this prevents patients being left without important medication.

Reduce Over stocking

A visually sound storage system also reduces over-stocking. This saves money but is also important for two crucial reasons:
It reduces medical waste, especially for medicines with a shorter shelf-life.
To conserve space. Having spare room is important as a pharmacy because new patients, local outbreaks, or breakthroughs in the medical field; may mean you need to stock new medicines at short notice.

The last element of how to put stock in pharmacy shelves is communication. Modular shelving is only a benefit when your pharmacists know where things are, otherwise you run the risk of increased human error. Make sure your staff are briefed on any changes, and consider having a pharmacy plan. Pharmacy plans can either be digital or printed and on display back-of-house.

Use your Team

Alternatively, it can be beneficial to involve your whole team in the task of reorganising stock. Staff contribution gives a headstart on remembering a new stock layout. It also gives your pharmacists a chance to troubleshoot any issues they’ve noticed during their shifts.

The Choice Is Yours!

Remember these are guidelines only, feel free to pick and choose elements from various shop floors. Or why not do some mystery shopping and learn from your competitors? If it’s within budget to outsource the job, companies like Inov8 Medical also provide store design services as well as shelving.

You can also learn while you earn by listening to customers’ opinions, and moving elements of your shop accordingly. After all, there’s no harm in updating the feel of your store layout while also keeping up customer relations!

Where here to help

If you are looking for some help designing your pharmacy floor space of shelving systems we have over 40 years of experience to help you achieve what you need for your business. Contact us here or call today on 0845 556 4371