Tag: IT|software|wms

A leading online farmer-to-farmer and ag tech company has been able to fast-track its expansion plans thanks to a tailored ‘Self Implementation’ programme from WMS provider, SnapFulfil, that enables customers to onboard the solution themselves.

With demand for their products and services soaring, Farmers Business Network (FBN) needed to quickly increase its warehouse capacity with the opening of 14 new DCs across the American Midwest in 2021, whilst retaining greater cost, labour and inventory efficiencies.

The ability to remotely implement and self-configure the WMS was essential to overcome the challenges of the global pandemic, decrease rollout time, and provide FBN with greater control, more independence and internal system expertise.

The first DC to be onboarded, in Newton, Iowa, and 186,000 sq ft, quickly delivered vastly improved picking efficiencies. The automated approach also eliminated the number of people manually involved and – with an eye to the future – delivered a standardised and more professional process that workers across all subsequent sites could easily follow.

FBN’s System Engineer, Darci Fluit, was initially schooled in both project control and project execution, including the likes of bespoke order transfer, stock management functionality, implementing the environment set up, rules engine configuration and all the staff training required via web conferencing.

Fluit said: “The SnapFulfil team are strong partners who provide clear instruction and advised me on how best to interview our operational staff about their specific order volume and storage requirements; then map out the intricacies of the processes needed and phased implementation from the very beginning.

“With each Go Live we saw increased speed and ease of implementation and by DC 5 we’d moved on to three simultaneous sites coming on stream, just a week apart. The robust programme we have in place makes it possible and the economies of scale implications are obvious. We’ve also been able to handle more complex integrations.”

SnapFulfil’s new Self Implementation documentation covers everything from data gathering, configuring the technical infrastructure, user preparation and verification to data migration, stock take and validation, plus go live support.

With a proven and ever improving onboarding programme now firmly entrenched in the process at FBN, the California-based company has begun expanding their fulfilment operations to Canada and Australia.

Körber has partnered with UK supermarket chain Sainsbury’s, which also comprises general merchandise retailer Argos, to deliver K.Motion Warehouse Management System (WMS) to enable the transformation of its logistics and fulfilment networks.

In a rapidly changing business landscape, modern retailers need unified and effective warehouse management solutions to handle increasingly complex supply chains and meet evolving customer needs.

Sainsbury’s currently has a network comprising multiple legacy warehouse management solutions, which are often product type and channel specific. The implementation of the Körber WMS is a key part of the retailer’s transformation journey to a more integrated network, which will enable it to serve its stores and customers better.

The retail chain’s biggest challenge was finding a WMS adaptable enough to span the different requirements of the entire business. This encompasses multiple distribution and fulfilment centres, catering for differing product types across food, general merchandise and clothing. Additionally, temporary depots are used to provide greater capacity in the network at peak times in the year such as Christmas. Körber’s WMS met these requirements.

“Fulfilment centres in today’s business landscape need to run at peak efficiency, and solutions that seamlessly integrate processes and reduce complexity are the key to success,” says Anton du Preez, Executive Vice President EMEA Sales, Körber Supply Chain Software. “With our solution, we provide the agility to cater to Sainsbury’s vast network of stores and broad variety of products. This allows them to maximise fulfilment efficiency, ensuring customer satisfaction and further growth.”

The solution Körber and Sainsbury’s are co-developing will allow the retailer to make configuration changes within the system themselves. This will enable customisation to incorporate new processes unique to the business and industry and reduce lead time to change. Additionally, the software is hosted in the cloud, easily facilitating changes to the solution and deployment across multiple warehouses.

This provides Sainsbury’s with the flexibility to easily upgrade the existing configuration to new cloud hardware and leveraging the latest technologies, while changing software and database systems whenever needed to adapt to ever-changing business and customer needs.

Sainsbury’s has been a Körber customer for a number of years, benefitting from voice-directed warehouse operations and K.Sight CLASS warehouse simulation. One example of the latest technology in this regard is the Körber One Screen to Voice function for streamlined picking in the warehouse: instructions to pickers are delivered via voice commands – replacing the scan gun. This allows two-handed operations, speeds up the process and leads to fewer errors. The result is greater operational efficiency and faster fulfilment to stores and customers.

In line with the fast growing direct to consumer (D2C) market, which is set to be worth some $175bn in the US alone by 2023, WMS technology innovator SnapFulfil has taken its pioneering remote implementation (RI) initiative to the next level with an advanced version that enables customers to onboard the solution themselves.

A tailored ‘Self Implementation’ programme provides step-by-step and hands-on guidance in project management and execution, to provide clients old and new with greater control, more independence and internal system expertise.

The new documentation factors in key steps, decisions and milestones to be completed throughout the project and covers everything from data gathering, configuring the technical infrastructure, user preparation and verification to data migration, stock take and validation, plus go live support.

SnapFulfil’s Chief Product & Delivery Officer, Smitha Raphael, said: “Today’s businesses need to be nimble and quick to respond to changing market demands. Over the past two years, in particular, we have seen many more customers adopt a D2C model that requires agile and easily configurable WMS solutions.

“We’re all about speed-to-value partnerships and being able to scale with our customers and be extremely flexible to meet all of the demands of their business. This self-sustainable implementation option (with our support as required) can facilitate quicker and slicker multi-site onboarding, once we’ve instructed them in the first one or two.

“The initial ability to digitally implement our WMS solution, whilst producing the same positive results in adoption and use as traditional on-site engagement, was essential to overcome the challenges of the global pandemic.  Moving forward, self-implementation means customers have all the technical essentials in place for a seamless self-rollout across their DC estate.”

Apart from the initial site set up, warehouse creation and user licensing that SnapFulfil always has to prepare first, self-implementation typically begins with internal operations and IT personnel designing work processes that the SnapFulfil team then fine tune.

This could include all facets of a D2C enterprise, such as receipts, transfer orders, customer returns, putaway and racking, cross-docking, vendor returns, order release and allocation, load creation, picking, plus inventory counting and stock audits.

Clients then allocate dedicated staff members to the new warehouse for input on tailored training documents via web conferencing, end-to-end integration testing, plus critical parts of the go-live timeline – and ultimately take control of the rules configuration, device training and copying the test into the live system in preparation for launch.

UK-based sports and hobbies retailer Fishing Tackle & Bait has successfully transformed its international fulfilment capabilities with Descartes’ cloud-based ecommerce warehouse management solution (WMS). With Descartes, the multi-channel merchant scaled order processing capacity by 250% without adding labour. In addition, it was able to virtually eliminate miss-picked items and overselling of inventory, and reduced customer service queries by more than 70%.

“Our business was originally a classic brick-and-mortar retail store, but we soon realised we had to broaden our distribution strategy and participate in marketplaces like Amazon and eBay to ensure future growth not only in the UK but also in Ireland, Europe and North America,” said David Burleigh, Director of Fishing Tackle & Bait.

“With COVID, we suddenly experienced an incredible spike in sales of over 250%. With only manual processes in place, we soon faced inaccurate stock levels and disappointed customers who were waiting for their deliveries. We were considering hiring additional staff when our ecommerce platform provider, IRP Commerce, recommended the Descartes ecommerce WMS to us. Now we’re extremely proud of our current logistics operations and our ability to better control over our customers’ delivery experiences.”

Part of Descartes’ ecommerce solution suite, the Descartes ecommerce WMS solution helps direct-to-consumer brands and ecommerce retailers rapidly scale in combination with providing an improved customer experience. The solution helps ensure that retailers can ship on time, ship the right items, reduce risks of overselling existing inventory, and have greater transparency into warehouse operations.

The Descartes ecommerce WMS solution has integrations into major ecommerce platforms to accelerate implementation and time to value. Order information is automatically available to be executed via mobile driven multi-order pick-and-pack strategies and then fed into parcel shipment systems.

“We’re pleased that Fishing Tackle & Bait is able to deliver a highly satisfying online buying and delivery experience to their customers,” said Dirk Haschke, VP & General Manager, Ecommerce at Descartes. “Our scalable ecommerce WMS offers efficient and intelligent processes that eliminate key warehouse management problem areas for online retailers. Fishing Tackle & Bait’s ecommerce success demonstrates the importance of automated order fulfilment for growing multi-channel merchants that want to stay ahead of their competition and retain satisfied customers.”

Tori Belle Cosmetics has improved its fulfilment efficiency rate by 25% since implementing the technologically advanced SnapFulfil cloud-based WMS.

The Seattle-based beauty leader, famous for its magnetic eyeliner application (under the LashLiner brand) that founder Laura Hunter invented, managed to grow by four times in 2020, during the pandemic, with SnapFulfil helping the company to execute and meet evolving customer demands.

Ease of integration with its Shopify platform and NetSuite ERP system, plus user-friendliness for management and staff alike, has also helped smooth the transition from paper to digital, with SnapFulfil bringing Tori Belle’s operations in line with its increased scale in each market segment.

Matthew Suarez, VP Global Distribution for Tori Belle Cosmetics, said: “Its solid, flexible and reliable software had a very positive impact on our team’s productivity. SnapFulfil provides that unique combination of cutting-edge technology, dedicated people operations and a business model that is adaptable for a company (of any size) that wants to pivot and expand rapidly.”

The company saw SnapFulfil as the best WMS option to control all-important labour costs for its aggressive expansion of operations, number of warehouses and associates, as well as a strategic partner enabling organisational growth. It also needed to streamline and structure operations as quickly as possible and achieve much greater visibility in fulfilment and order processing.

Tori Belle Cosmetics is now looking to expand its distribution footprint internationally – starting with a hub in the Midlands, UK – but efficiently and “without rebuilding the wheel” for each market. Suarez adds: “SnapFulfil will play a major part, because of its agility and multi-site capabilities and we look forward to our continued collaboration as we scale from a medium to large organisation.”

 

PSI Logistics GmbH is again delivering an upgrade for the PSIwms warehouse management system to the Weiss Chemie + Technik GmbH & Co. KG. With the current functionalities, the ergonomics, efficiency and the possibilities for analysing the KPIs of the processes in the warehouse can be further improved.

At the production facility in Haiger Weiss Chemie + Technik produces more than 6,300 tonnes of adhesives, 950 tonnes of cleansers and 650,000 sq m of sandwich panels annually. The PSIwms system, implemented as early as 2000, controls the processes through dynamic storage space conversion with a number of pallets on a triple-euro storage space, route-optimised order picking as well as needs-based material provision and on-time transportation of the finished goods. By means of the cross-location functionality, the multi-level processes of the production stations including staging areas and stocks are also reproduced.

With the new upgrade, new functionalities such as activity tracking can be used to log activities and KPIs in the warehouse to record process times for in-depth analysis and optimisation of processes. In addition, the PSI Click Design provides better flexibility in customising user interfaces.

PSIwms Release 2021 offers easier goods receipt and placement. In addition, the dashboard improves ergonomics on mobile touch devices, which can be used to visualise warehouse information on all common devices via the cloud.

The PSI Group develops its own software products for optimising the flow of energy and materials for utilities (energy grids, energy trading, public transport) and industry (metals production, automotive, mechanical engineering, logistics). PSI was founded in 1969 and employs more than 2,100 people worldwide.

Körber is working with Toolstation, one of Britain’s fastest-growing suppliers of tools, accessories and building supplies to the trade, home improvers and self-builders, to evolve its multichannel capabilities to meet consumer demands. This includes enhancing processes in its Redditch distribution centre while supporting Toolstation’s expanding network of stores.

Toolstation is experiencing significant growth in online and retail orders. As a result, the company outgrew its paper-based processes – leading to a lack of visibility and productivity constraints for the workforce. With its vast range of products, even though broken into warehouse ‘logic zones’, Toolstation was challenged to simultaneously manage smaller, sometimes single, e-commerce orders along with bulk distributions for its stores.

The company needed a solution to increase workforce productivity, simplify picking, increase capacity within its current warehouse and integrate with its existing, proprietary order management system that linked all of its stores. Kӧrber made this possible.

“At Toolstation, our customers and colleagues are at the heart of everything we do. As our business continues to rapidly grow and expand, the needs and expectations of our customers continue to develop and change, be it product range, speed of delivery or convenience. It was really important for us to streamline our processes to make picking easier for our colleagues, improve visibility of workload across our distribution centre and to improve the quality of delivery to our customers.

“When we turned to Körber, we were looking to reduce our in-house complexities to develop a superior solution that would work in our current operation and with our existing IT infrastructure,” said Jim Gowland, Head of Distribution at Toolstation.

Working with Toolstation, Körber designed a solution that uses a warehouse execution system (WES) combined with voice technology to facilitate process change, driving efficiency and accuracy.

The WES builds the basis of operational improvements: It links orders geographically in the warehouse to limit the walk time of each operator. Innovative multi-order picking logic enables picking for multiple customers. Furthermore, product information is used to maximise the fill of each delivery unit, reducing transportation costs as well as amplifying operators’ picking tours.

The voice system improves the pickers’ experience in a different way. Workers hear and verbally confirm instructions step by step via headset. This ensures process conformity, improves productivity and reduces errors. The complexity of Toolstation’s product range also makes onboarding new pickers challenging. Voice technology has a proven record of significantly reducing training time. Due to the accuracy of voice picking, goods-in and put-away of orders delivered to stores will also be significantly improved, freeing up employees’ time for more valuable customer tasks.

A further benefit of the two linked systems is the WES’ ability to log and track each voice-directed action and provide near real-time visibility via a suite of standard dashboards. This gives the warehouse management team true insight into the operation.

“At Körber, we review operations to not only understand the ’what you do’ but more importantly ’the why’,” said Anton du Preez, Chief Sales Officer Software EME, Körber Business Area Supply Chain. “We work with our customers to identify how we can improve a process, and then consider the best technology fit. Along with decades of successful deployments worldwide, we have a wide range of solutions covering the entire supply chain at our disposal, as the complexities in today’s supply chain mean there is no ’one-size-fits-all‘ solution.

“The solution we will be implementing at Toolstation goes to show how much potential an existing warehouse has if the right type of technology is applied.”

Leading temperature-controlled storage and distribution business Reed Boardall has been a long-standing user of the Empirica warehouse management system from Chess Logistics Technology. The two companies have worked together for over a quarter of a century, during which time Reed Boardall has grown to become one of the largest businesses of its type in the UK.

“Over the years as the business has grown and we have added new customers and new lines, the WMS has always been a constant that has allowed us to make those changes,” says Andrew Baldwin, Managing Director, Reed Boardall Cold Storage. “We have always been able to support the business with Chess.”

The scale of operations at Reed Boardall is undeniable. Its 55-acre facility in Boroughbridge, Yorkshire is the biggest in Europe and the company is the UK’s largest single-site frozen food consolidator, delivering more than 12,000 pallets a day to food service and retail customers across the UK with its fleet of almost 200 refrigerated vehicles.

A 10,200 sq m extension to one of the seven state-of-the-art cold store chambers, completed in early 2021, brought Reed Boardall’s total capacity to 168,000 pallets of frozen produce at any one time. Adding this much capacity could, on the face of it, have significant implications for the WMS. In reality, however, all that had changed from a WMS perspective was the number of locations and it was easy to add these to the application’s database. Empirica is scalable to meet evolving demands like this and the number of locations it can manage is effectively limitless.

The extension would represent a major undertaking at the best of times but it was completed on schedule against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic that has presented challenges to all supply chain businesses. Reed Boardall is no exception and the business has experienced changes to its operations since March 2020. In particular, the lockdown resulted in fewer case-based orders from food service operators, many of which have been closed, but increased the full-pallet demands of retailers, most of whom have seen their sales increase. People have to eat, after all, and with limited alternatives available most have chosen to do so at home.

From a WMS perspective changes in order profiles presented few challenges. The system is designed to cope with all types of order and has the flexibility to respond and adapt to dynamic demands in real time.

“The processes have not changed much over the last 12 months from a business perspective,” says Andrew Baldwin. “Things that have changed have been outside our control but the WMS has always been the backbone and it’s always been there.”

It could be argued that the ability to adapt to fluctuating demands and ensure all orders are completed efficiently and delivered at the time required by the customer is the core requirement from a modern WMS. This is perhaps illustrated by the increasing shift by retailers to day-one-for-day-two delivery models over day-one-for-day-three or weekly deliveries. By definition, this shortens the time available to plan, assemble and despatch an order and the WMS has to be able to prioritise operations accordingly. Empirica achieves this by allowing users to set a wide range of parameters that the system uses to ensure all orders in progress are picked at the best time throughout each 24-hour cycle and despatched to meet expected delivery schedules.

Effective stock rotation is a key consideration in this process. Reed Boardall typically picks stock on a strict best before date basis as this allows for tight stock control with good end user availability and shelf life. This presents no problems for the WMS as sell-by date is one of many parameters that can be used to ensure one case or pallet is prioritised over another.

“The system allows us to do anything we need,” says Andrew Baldwin. “With strict best before day rotation, for example, Chess allows us to manipulate the system to do that.”

Cases and pallets in a cold store are little different to those found in other warehouses from a WMS perspective. Nevertheless, food supply tends to be reactive and there are seasonal factors which affect demand. Warm weather always leads to an increase in orders for party and barbeque food as well as ice cream. These demands can arise quickly and the WMS needs to cope. In addition, during 2020, the lockdown meant the usual dip in sales over summer when people go abroad for holidays did not occur. Towards the end of the year, like many warehouses, capacity was right on the limit as stock from the EU was brought in early to help avoid potential supply chain issues caused by the uncertainty over Brexit. Despite these challenges it was business as usual at Reed Boardall.

“Over the years as we have come across an issue – often driven by a customer – that changes how we operate, Chess has been able to step up,” says Andrew Baldwin. “We have covered pretty much every eventuality since we have been working with Chess.”

Changes in consumer shopping habits have led to food companies needing a more responsive logistics partner that is able to reliably consolidate products in order to cost-effectively deliver little and often. Reed Boardall’s single site business model has proved ideal for this. With support from key suppliers such as Chess the company has been able to grow and evolve its business to meet the ever-changing needs of the market.

Online Swiss beauty vendor haar-shop.ch AG significantly improved order fulfilment productivity by over 40% and increased its warehouse utilisation rate by more than one-third by using Descartes’ cloud-based ecommerce warehouse management solution (WMS).

As haar-shop.ch’s online business grew, it quickly became clear that manual fulfilment processes needed to be modernised. Its existing inventory management system did not offer advanced warehouse management capabilities such as “chaotic warehousing,” which speeds the put away process and maximises warehouse space utilisation.

Employee processing and warehouse capacity quickly reached their limits. “We had sorted the shelves by brand, so every employee was required to memorise the product location in the warehouse,” said Markus Stoller, Head of IT at haar-shop.ch. “Our warehouse operations were inefficient as a result, and we couldn’t implement multi-order picking to improve employee productivity.”

With the Descartes solution, haar-shop.ch not only optimised the use of warehouse space, but also significantly increased shipping speed. “Our goals were exceeded. We gained over 35% storage space and increased productivity in order fulfilment by more than 40%,” Stoller explained.

“By automating fulfilment processes, manual steps are reduced, which initiated massive changes in daily routines, but definitely paid off quickly. In fact, the benefits we had aimed for were achieved in only two weeks!”

Part of Descartes’ ecommerce solution suite, the Descartes Ecommerce WMS solution helps direct-to-consumer brands, ecommerce retailers, and traditional retailers rapidly scale in combination with providing a remarkable customer experience. The solution helps ensure that clients can ship on time, ship the right items, do not oversell existing inventory, and have full transparency into warehouse operations.

The Descartes Ecommerce WMS solution is pre-integrated to major e-commerce platforms like Shopify, Magento or Shopware to accelerate implementation and time to value. Order information is automatically available to be executed via mobile-driven multi-order pick-and-pack strategies and then fed into parcel shipment systems.

“The Descartes solution can help haar-shop.ch’s warehouse logistics processes scale along with their online store’s sales growth. We’re very proud to be able to support haar-shop.ch in offering its customers an outstanding shopping and delivery experience,” said Dirk Haschke, VP & General Manager, Ecommerce at Descartes. “For companies with eCommerce warehouse operations, excellence in order fulfilment is a key element for sustainable, successful business growth.”

Zalando Lounge, the fashion and lifestyle online shopping club relies on software from Körber to control operations at its fulfilment centre in Olsztynek, northern Poland.

Körber is supporting Zalando Lounge’s further growth with a high-performance, automated system for advanced material flow control. The 130,000 sq m logistics centre took up operations in 2019 to cater to the success of Zalando’s steadily growing shopping club, the Zalando Lounge.

It is one of the most successful online shopping clubs in Europe, with more than 50 million members in 14 European markets. The site in Olsztynek is Zalando Lounge’s first international fulfilment centre.

Zalando and Körber previously introduced technically complex and demanding projects at sites in Łódź (Poland) and Nogarole Rocca (Italy). At each of these sites, Kӧrber successfully implemented its warehouse control system (WCS). These control a multitude of components, from shuttle systems to different types of sorters. Based on the success of these projects, Zalando Lounge needed a similar solution to control the two-stage sorting plant, which will sort more than 200,000 multi-item orders a day.

At the site in Poland, Kӧrber again integrated its WCS. This controls the item sorter system, the largest of its kind in Europe. The commissioning process takes place in two phases. In phase one, bulk order picking carried out according to batches. In phase two, the WCS uniquely controls the sorters performing individual order picking. This system effectively enables management of high-order volumes from a wide array of customers. As a result, the fulfilment centre can now handle the increasing number of orders from its steadily growing customer base.

In a second project at the same site, Körber integrated additional project-specific functions in the WCS. This includes inventory management in the narrow aisle store, achieving higher storage density, as well as automatic warehouse navigation to execute and control put away and retrieval of all forklift transports.

“Our experience from previous projects convinced us Körber is the right partner for our logistics centre in Olsztynek. We appreciate the co-operation with the Körber team, which supports us especially with its know-how with the increasing requirements for seamless interaction of logistics components,” says Sven Thiessen, Director Offprice Logistics for Zalando Lounge. The WCS allows us to process the steadily increasing number of orders to serve our customers with the expected high quality.”

Michael Brandl, CEO Software Europe and Middle East, Körber Business Area Supply Chain, comments: “There is no room for downtime in logistics installations, which is why customers worldwide rely on us to get it right. We at Körber draw from decades of experience in logistics projects. We focus on choosing the right solution from a consultation, customisation, integration, product and add-on point of view, adapted for the respective environment. This can be in terms of customising the solutions as well as using the right type of automation. Continued trust from organisations such as Zalando Lounge and the outlook of growing together as partners is what makes projects like this so rewarding.”