CJ OliveNetworks to build pharmaceutical distribution center

South Korean digital service company CJ OliveNetworks is accelerating its logistics center operations by teaming up with Pusan National University Yangsan Hospital in Yangsan, South Gyeongsang Province, to build an automated logistics center for medical supplies.

The company on Wednesday said the center will have many facilities using Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies such as artificial intelligence and robots, with the leading facility to be a 3D cube-shaped warehouse for surgical materials and medical consumables.

When a staff member enters the quantity and type of items desired like scalpels, gauze, bandages and blood at the first-floor kiosk, a cube-shaped robot performs a search at the warehouse and brings them. Medical staff thus have no need to enter the warehouse to check each item.

In addition, CJ OliveNetworks will build an automated warehouse for drug management and an automated system for storing and shipping linen used to make surgical and patient gowns. The storage facility has a capacity of around 110,000 medicine boxes as big as the palm of a human hand.

The hospital will become the nation's first to achieve logistics automation after the logistics center is completed by late 2026 on a site of 5,400 square meters behind the ward, CJ OliveNetworks said.

The company previously built an automated smart logistics center in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, for the Korea Pharmaceutical Industry Cooperative, and set up last month the mobile communication network Ieum 5G at CJ Logistics' Icheon Fulfillment Center 1 in Icheon of the same province.

Write to Hae-Sung Lee at ihs@hankyung.com