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Distribution - Warehouse Management

Aventi achieves 99% picking accuracy with Codegate's mobilewarehouse^TM WMS

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Executive Summary

The distribution logistics underpinning Aventi's new technology sales and marketing business were failing due to massive trading growth over a short period of time. With 1 in every three deliveries containing errors, and stock taking costing the business valuable man hours, they needed to drastically reduce the errors and downtime, whilst better handling their multiple business models. The answer was to go wireless and deploy mobilewarehouse^TM warehouse management solution from Codegate, and some of the latest barcoding technology hardware - the results were remarkable.

Company Profile

Aventi is a leading sales, marketing and logistics partner for suppliers of new technology and DVD film. Comprising four companies operating under a holding company, Aventi provides value added commercial support to new and existing vendors who wish to expand their European sales channels. Operating from locations in the United Kingdom and France, Aventi has established trade links with IT/mobile resellers and major retail accounts.

The Business Challenge

With a rise in demand for DVD and new technology, Aventi experienced a rapid period of growth that saw a doubling of staff and a rise of inventory lines from just 20 to 250 in only 6 months.

This put a huge amount of pressure on the business and resulted in the move of Aventi's main business system from Sage Line 100 to Access Accounting. This change highlighted the company's need for a warehouse management system but despite a thorough search of the marketplace Aventi could not find a system that would integrate with its new ERP system. Following a recommendation, Aventi was introduced to Codegate, a company specialising in warehouse management systems and mobile data solutions. Codegate had developed a warehouse management system called mobilewarehouseTM and had recently integrated this solution with Access Accounting.

The Solution

Codegate conducted an extensive audit of Aventi's business and developed a very thorough understanding of the business operation. It put together a detailed software and hardware specification that comprised both its mobilewarehouse WMS, a Cisco wireless network, Unitech PT930 wireless handheld terminals and Zebra 105SL wireless barcode label printers.

The implementation was then delayed by a number of months as Aventi went through another period of massive growth increasing its warehousing space from 8,000ft² to 20,000ft² in a very short space of time. When the system did go live it proved to be quite challenging as Aventi decided to run 2 separate versions of mobilewarehouse simultaneously, each managing the stock for 2 of the 4 companies within the Aventi group.

Adam Wheeler, Operations Manager for Aventi explains "As our business changed, Codegate developed its mobilewarehouse solution to enable it to evolve with us."

Aventi are utilising 9 main functions of the mobilewarehouse system: goods in, order pick, goods move, pick face replenishment, goods out/despatch, stock take, spot check and returns. The mobilewarehouse system provides real time data communications from the warehouse with Aventi's ERP solution, enabling it to update stock on the fly and ensure warehouse operatives have far less room for error.

The Results

Since going live with mobilewarehouse, Aventi has seen an immediate return on its stock takes alone. End of year stock takes used to require a full warehouse shut down for a week, resulting in substantial loss of business. Now, using mobilewarehouse, Aventi can conduct a full stock check over a single weekend resulting in no loss of trading. Additionally, warehouse operatives can do a real time live update spot check if they find a discrepancy whilst picking. For example, if an operative is supposed to be picking 10 items and there are only 9 in the stock location they can set the stock level to 0 on the handheld terminal which will automatically update the WMS and log a discrepancy of -1.

Stock accuracy has also improved. Prior to implementing mobilewarehouse, Aventi was seeing errors in 1 out of every 3 orders. In an effort to combat this, Aventi asked Codegate to develop a process to enable double checking of orders whereby one operative picks an order and another checks and verifies it. The items are scanned using the Unitech handheld terminals which force a double checking system on each order before it is cleared for despatch.

Wheeler continues "Codegate developed a specific application for this in mobilewarehouse and since implementation picking errors have reduced to a negligible 1%, with 99% of all orders now being picked correctly. Also, as the operatives have to logon to the handheld terminals we have full traceability of each order picked and can quickly see if an operator starts making mistakes."

The improvements in data communications and processes have also resulted in efficiency gains. Stock can now be booked in straight from the floor in real time. Pallet and product labels can be printed wirelessly directly from the handheld terminals from any location in the warehouse reducing the time spent walking to and from the printer.

"Mobilewarehouse has made a massive difference to our business and Codegate has been incredibly supportive. They know their system extremely well, respond to our queries straight away and have proved themselves to be the perfect partner to work with." Wheeler concludes.