Ahlers St Petersburg

At the end of August there began work the second queue of the logistic terminal of the St. Petersburg representative office of the international company Ahlers. Implementation of the Dutch WMS system of Chainware which in the long term can become the corporate standard of world Ahlers is in parallel conducted.

At the moment the staff of representation makes about 100 people, of them a half – warehouse workers. The representation in addition to again built up warehouse complex locates the central office and several more office points in places of the most brisk cargo flow.

In 2002 in Alers Sankt Peterburg implementation of the accounting Monolith program which was selected thanks to the implemented support of multi-currency accounting that is relevant for the international logistic operator began. The functionality of Monolith includes accounting, payroll and accounting of personnel. IT specialists of the Russian representative office for the last years conducted development of the "self-written" WMS system under the working name Store which had to exclude paper document flow and as a result automate all warehouse processes from accounting and placement of goods to requests and shipment.

However then the decision on use of the Chainware program of production of the Dutch company Interchain which was selected from quality of the corporate Ahlers standard was made. Parallel implementation of this system is conducted on other terminal of the company, in the Belgian Ghent. At the same time, as specialists of the St. Petersburg Ahlers note, parallel use of two programs is impossible as at each of them the logic of work.

The WMS system of Chainware enjoys popularity in Holland, Germany and Belgium. It is remarkable that its parallel implementation in Russia and Belgium – the first experience of Ahlers. When choosing a corporate system the tender in which DCS and Catlogics companies also took part was held. Before implementation of Chainware as the corporate standard in the company the Bevex system from Organi also moved ahead, but, in particular, in the St. Petersburg representative office of its opportunity were used very narrowly, and as a result a system was rejected. As for investments into Chainware implementation, their volume it is not known as purchase of software was made by the central office of the company.

Localization of the Belgian software is conducted by forces of local IT department and the invited specialist from head office Ahlers. Test operation of Chainware with parallel user training is now conducted. So far it is 4 operators, but in the long term a system will work at all six divisions of the terminal and will cover about 20 users. Final transition to Chainware, most likely, will be performed in a month. Besides, the possibility of the consolidation Chainware with the Monolith system is developed to obtain the general data for the reporting and the analysis. The complexity is here that Chainware is written on Java under the Linux platform that is an uncharacteristic combination for the domestic electronic systems. However in it there is an advantage - Java allows to integrate with ease a system with mobile devices.

At the same time for warehouse personnel the communication system based on wireless Wi-fi technology will be organized. It will provide data transmission for Symbol terminals which are intended for reading barcodes and communication with the WMS system. So far 2 spot jotas in the first operating warehouse are organized, and as a result in their six warehouses there will be 36. Now the system of barcoding is brought into test operation. It is known also that all warehouse complexes will be united in a local network which will include about 30-40 jobs.