Avenir (Proxima Warehouse)

2009-2014

By mid-2006, the management of our company came to the conclusion that it was necessary to automate the food warehouse.

The main tasks solved by the warehouse are:

• stockpile and storage in accordance with current inventory regulations;
• cargo processing of the incoming product flow;
• Pick and ship orders to customers at retail locations
• Pick and ship orders to regional representatives.

The growth of the company's turnover and the desire to increase service efficiency required the development of logistics processes. By this time, we had identified a number of problems that automation had to solve:

• It has become difficult to take into account the shelf life of products. The new arrangement of goods in 4-5 levels did not allow it to be done visually;
• Large manufacturers, improving their logistics, change the packing of boxes. Because of this, there were errors with the quantity of goods shipped;
• Low productivity, which made it necessary to keep a lot of staff in stock;
• Long-term training process for warehouse workers. It took about a month to study the assortment and packaging;
• Difficulties taking into account operations. The employee participation rate was not clear, and accordingly there were difficulties in paying for merit;
• Manufacturers require certain conditions to be met. So, for example, large manufacturers, such as Nestle and Unilever companies, work with those who have implemented the WMS system.

Having decided on the need to automate the warehouse as soon as possible, our management studied almost the entire WMS system market. First of all, we focused on a manufacturer capable of making changes to the system to our requirements. We initially assumed that there would be a lot of such improvements, since the work in the field of distribution is very specific. Many manufacturers we need to unite in the framework of a single System.

Avenir, as a sales and distribution company, deals with a huge assortment of products, so functions such as batch accounting, shelf life control and production dates are of great importance for the work.

Among other mandatory conditions, we have made it possible to work with radio terminals based on PDAs, technical support and readiness to integrate with other programs. In addition, we were interested in the timing of implementation. We could only spend 1.5-2 months to automate the warehouse with WMS. The budget planned for warehouse automation was also important, but by no means paramount.

As a result, after a long search, it was decided to implement the Proxima-Warehouse warehouse management system (configuration WAREHOUSE MANAGEMENT Professional), developed by AI TI Scan.

WMS Implementation Practices

Automation work began with the reconstruction of an industrial building under a modern warehouse with an area of ​ ​ 10,000 sq.m. Within the framework of the project, logistic design work was carried out: the analysis of the goods flows of the enterprise was carried out, various versions of the rack equipment, the traffic diagram of vehicles were considered and the optimal version of the warehouse technology was chosen.

During the implementation of WMS, AI Ti Scan specialists integrated with 1C: Enterprise 7.7 software products and the Optimum system (automation of sales representatives at retail outlets through PDAs).

As a result, the implementation of the Proxima Warehouse system took 3 months, it took another few months to periodically adjust business processes. Work on improving the business processes of the enterprise and adjusting the settings of WMS went on throughout the year, since the specifics of the distribution work required a large number of changes.

The logic of most western WMS in batch accounting is designed to sequentially mark the entire accepted product with barcode labels according to the nesting of packages, or to refuse batch accounting in the case of using the manufacturer's barcode.

In our warehouse, the goods of many suppliers are collected and the markings of everyone are different, moreover, we did not have and do not have time to consistently mark the goods during acceptance and the classic approach turned out to be unacceptable for us. Proxima takes into account all these nuances due to the original approach to implementing the make-up of selection cells and the function of breaking the party.

Accounting of labor costs

With the implementation of the system, it became possible not only to take into account the operations performed in the warehouse, but also to analyze the time required to perform them. In this regard, an effective remuneration mechanism has been developed.

The most massive operation in the warehouse is a piece selection of goods, therefore, first of all, attention was paid to requisition pickers. The system allows you to record the time spent on selection from the first to the last capture, the time to deliver the pallet to the area of ​ ​ finished orders is almost the same, therefore three criteria were used: the number of approaches to the goods, the weight of the goods and the time spent on the export of the finished order. The standard for the average collector was deduced and based on the working time required for KZOT, transaction rates were deducted.

In addition, it became possible to plan resources, which means that the warehouse staff began to be less idle and therefore earn more. Each employee wants to earn more and our task is to ensure his work. It is possible to train universal employees who can perform almost the entire list of warehouse operations and receive payment.

Error-free operation of personnel

The ability to work with radio terminals has become an undeniable advantage. Sales representatives take applications through set-up machines (KPC), and immediately directly receive from Proxima a fresh balance with the exception of the reservation the next day. Having only this functionality fully justifies the costs of automation.

It should be noted that at first, warehouse workers did not realize that there are rules for working with WMS and they need to be observed. Incorrect source data entails a whole chain of errors. After transferring the personnel involved in the WMS circuit from time to operating pay based on WMS statistics, the warehouse staff realized that WMS did not allow incorrect operations and the mood of people changed dramatically.

Of great importance to our company is the fact that the introduction of WMS made it possible to identify errors in the work that were always, but they were not noticed. For example, instead of pasta of one brand, they accepted or shipped another, etc. He repackaged the boxes with a warehouse, and again everything is fine and calm. After the implementation of WMS, these problems were revealed and eliminated. Dependence on the human factor tends to zero. This is a big plus of automation.

Thus, you can summarize. The main goals of the implementation of the Proxima-Warehouse warehouse management system have been achieved, in our case the system paid off within a year.'

• Implementation of "Proxima-Warehouse" system at the warehouse in Makhachkala (6000 sq.m., food, 15 TSD)