Accellos WMS for Microsoft Dynamics GP
COMPANY: Christian Art Gifts KEY BENEFITS: - Line items picked up from 500 to 1,200
- Significant picking accuracy improvement
- Increased inventory control
- Increased customer service levels
Created in February of 2003, the Lombard, Illinois–based Christian Art Gifts Inc. is a distributor of books, journals, book-marks, cards and other unique gift items. The company ships its products to approximately 1,000 retailers around the world. The Illinois center is the newest distribution branch of the 25 year old Christian Art Gifts Inc. company based in South Africa. Over its quarter century history this medium sized gifts distribution company has grown and has distributors in countries from Australia to the United Kingdom and Canada, and now the U.S. All of Christian Art Gifts’ products are designed in the South African head office and are manufactured by a network of world-wide partners, with the majority of manufacturing done in Asia. This complex corporate structure, combined with a highly seasonal demand cycle—Christian Art Gifts sees its highest demand during the holiday buying season—makes it critical for the warehouses, which support branch distribution, to be highly efficient and productive. The staff of the new U.S. distribution center was looking for a technology solution to increase both efficiency and productivity when the warehouse opened its doors for business in May of 2003. The Challenge
When Christian Art Gifts began distributing gift items throughout the U.S., the company’s 20,000 sq. foot warehouse was run through its ERP system, Microsoft Great Plains. Received orders were entered into the ERP system which would then generate a picking list. The list would then have to be printed out and employees would use it to manually move through customer orders. The paper-based system quickly proved to be a challenge. Many of the Christian Art Gifts products, like books, bookmarks and journals are difficult to distinguish. Very often the size, shape and even colour of the product are the same, with the only marked difference being wording and a unique barcode. Because a paper-based system does not allow for picking by barcode, staff were struggling with finding the products they needed to fill their orders—this challenge was negatively affecting both revenue and customer service levels.
With no electronic way of tracking the picking lists once they had been printed, the company was also challenged by lists that would go missing. Sometimes the same list would accidentally be printed twice, leading to duplication of work. "We were concerned about the levels of inefficiency with our paper-based warehouse," says Heinrich Johnsen, Christian Art Gifts President. "We never knew where we were in terms of orders processed or waiting to be filled. If we had a 100 picking lists printed, unless we went back and counted what was left, we would have no knowledge of where we were during the day." The Solution
After four months of operation, the company realized that its current system would not be able to support its growing business. In September 2003, Christian Art Gifts working with Associated Material Handling decided to introduce RADIO BEACON Lite 3.3 to its warehouse. RADIO BEACON Lite is a cost-effective, yet feature-rich warehouse management system (WMS) designed for small- to-mid-sized wholesale distributors like Christian Art Gifts. The organization is able to optimize warehouse operations by automating the materials handling process and providing productivity tools, helping the company to create a paper-free warehouse.
Christian Art Gifts made the decision to introduce the solution to its warehouse in large part because of RADIO BEACON’s integration with Microsoft Great Plains, as well as its cost effectiveness. After only a two week installation and training process, the warehouse was able to leverage the full capabilities of RADIO BEACON. The Benefits
In October of 2003, after having only used RADIO BEACON Lite for one month, the company is shipping twice the volume with the same number of staff.
Inventory control has also improved significantly since the RADIO BEACON implementation. Where previously warehouse staff used to update each other on inventory levels using sticky notes and paper, the system is now updated in real time as products leave or arrive on the warehouse floor. The issue of orders going unfilled or duplication of work has also been resolved thanks to RADIO BEACON WMS. The organization can monitor each product picked in the warehouse in real-time—giving staff complete visibility into orders filled and products shipped. The WMS has also turned into a powerful benchmarking tool for the organization. Because RADIO BEACON breaks down levels of products picked into half hour segments, Christian Art Gifts is now able to accurately track its productivity levels throughout the day, and is able to strategically schedule staff to ensure order completion during its busiest times. "We’re really pleased with the improvements we’ve been able to introduce to our company with the help of RADIO BEACON WMS," Johnsen says. "What I think is significant is not the way we use this system, but that we can. We're a small company and having the opportunity to implement something like this in a short time, at a very low cost and to be able to really see an impact on our labour cost, accuracy and efficiency, I think that's a great story for small businesses." The Future
Due to growing business demand Christian Art Gifts is gearing up to expand its warehouse. The company's new warehouse will also leverage RADIO BEACON WMS and integrate it with the FedEx QuickShip system.
The company plans to take this step to further increase customer service, allowing customers to track the progress of their own orders online. "RADIO BEACON Lite is a great tool for small businesses. A lot of small businesses work off manual picking lists, thinking they just can't afford systems like this," Johnsen says. "But we started the company only about six months ago and look at our warehouse now; everything is done through wireless scanning. We couldn’t have done it without RADIO BEACON."
|
