WHO Scanning, labelling, and barcoding solution

Item Description:

The World Health Organization (WHO) was established in 1948 as a specialized agency of the United Nations. The objective of WHO (www.who.int) is the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health. “Health”, as defined in the WHO Constitution, is a state of complete physical, mental and social well being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. WHO’s main function is to act as the directing and coordinating authority on international health work.

The WHO Secretariat consists of some 8,400 staff at the Organization’s headquarters in Geneva, in the six regional offices and in countries. The Secretariat is headed by the Director-General, who is appointed by the WHA on the nomination of the Executive Board. The head of each regional office is a Regional Director. Regional directors are appointed by the Executive Board in agreement with the relevant regional committee.

Request for Information (RFI)

In this RFI, the WHO intends to identify potential suppliers and to gather ideas from industry for a SaaS solution that will handle our scanning, labelling and barcoding requirements used globally.

This RFI will serve to conduct market research to identify firms capable of providing solutions for the above stated services and technology. Vendor may be requested, as part of this RFI, to give a presentation of their product and/or service to WHO.

This announcement is a Request for Information (RFI), not a solicitation for offers, and accordingly, no contract will be awarded from this announcement. Vendor’s responses, as a result of this announcement, shall focus on providing recommendations for the requirements as detailed below. Information provided in the RFI may be used by WHO in solicitation documents.

The information received in response to an RFI is not used for the purpose of qualifying vendors. Primarily, it helps identify generic descriptions of available or potential alternatives for fulfilling a defined requirement or outcome, as well as the possible costs and delivery time.

The RFI is oriented toward seeking a technical alternative, option, solution, or cost estimate, rather than a direct response in the form of an offer from the market or industry. An RFI shall help WHO identify a possible solution for a specific requirement and to gauge the commercial environment for the requirement.

WHO appreciates your assistance with this market research and emphasizes that this effort is for planning purposes only. Responses will not be treated as proposals but may be used to create any subsequent Request for Proposal (RFP) / Invitation to Bid (ITB).

Specific Requirements / Information

WHO is starting a large program to replace their current ERP (Oracle eBusiness Suite) with a best of breed SaaS based solution.

As part of the new architecture, we are looking to strengthen the way we handle goods In and Out of WHO’s warehouses as well as being able to create and print our own barcodes and have the ability to scan them. Currently, WHO has around 76 Warehouses in 33 countries managing 8,000 -10,000 items using central Global Inventory Management System (GIMS) around the world. The current solutions are in most cases independent of one another and there is no standard technology in place that covers the creation, printing and scanning of barcodes etc across the warehouses.

This RFI is issued to gather insight as to what solutions are available in market to cover all of WHO’s needs: we are looking for a single solution for the Management / Design and Printing of Barcode labels as well as for the printing and scanning technologies that will be procured separately which can integrate with our new SaaS applications. However, with that said we would also be looking for further recommendations as to what peripheral devices are best suited with your solution.

At the request of WHO the vendor solutions in reply to this RFI may cover all industry wide barcoding standards which include Linier, 1D, 2D 3D Barcodes as well as the ability to setup, print, manage and read RFID’s.

The interested vendor should also show their roadmaps as to what the new standards and functionality are on the horizon.

Documents

2022_101_BOS_scanning_labelling and barcoding_20220401_Final.docx