Thanks to the aging of America and a stream of new wonders from labs, pharmaceutical sales were exploding. But pharmaceutical distributors' profit margins were thin as political and social pressures on health care costs mounted and as the cutthroat distribution business began to consolidate. FoxMeyer wanted to be a survivor. To become one, management decided that it needed to replace the brains of its far-flung distribution system. Shipping pharmaceuticals isn't like shipping bananas.
Many drugs are heavily secured.
Some quickly expire. You can't make arbitrary or late shipments. FoxMeyer's old Unisys mainframe was creaking under the strain. It could only track inventories daily, for example, as shipments came and went-not minute by minute, as had become the standard at some competitors. Many of its 30 warehouses across the country were older buildings operating on clunky software.