Nieuws
Solvo.WMS Takes Control at Warehouse of Lady & Gentleman CITY
24.02.2015
In November of 2014, SOLVO finalized an automation project for the distribution center of the Lady & Gentleman CITY company.
Warehouse specifications
The warehouse of Lady & Gentleman CITY has a total area of 10,000 square meters and specializes for storing clothes, goods made out of leather and fur, as well as accessories.
The warehouse is equipped with a three-level mezzanine that is mounted with a transport system. The first level of the mezzanine is a large zone for units; the warehouse also contains zones with racks for pallet, carton and units storage.
A significant part of the mezzanine contains a special racking system for organizing the storage of clothing on hangers (around 35,000 locations in the hanging zone).
The warehouse has a high velocity. The number of active SKUs includes 85,000 items (including various sizes) with an average daily order amount of 1,000.
The average daily turnover is over 25,000 items, which includes 100% SKU unit processing upon arrival and shipping. The warehouse processes new arrivals, seasonal returns, and exchanges between retail stores. The goods are distributed among the network of its own retail stores as well as other outlets of its contract partners.
Implementation objectives and management system selection
The main goal of the Lady & Gentleman CITY automation project was to ensure full control over the flow of goods, inventory record keeping at the warehouse as well as an increase in the quality of order processing and quality control of incoming and outgoing goods.
Solvo.WMS was selected in the result of the company held tender. The reason SOLVO was chosen as the winner was due to its vast experience in automating processes at warehouses for storing clothing and footwear e.g. SELA, CenterObuv and Bell Bimbo, which allowed the customer to employ the best practices for automating fashion-industry warehouses. Other factors included SOLVO’s multi-level, Russian-language technical support for the first year of the system’s commercial operation.
Project specifics
SOLVO Project Manager, Ilya Rubinchik, stated:
»It was very important for the client to follow a strict project time table: system implementation was performed at the new warehouse, to which the Lady & Gentleman CITY company moved from several previous warehouses. The timeframe was critical: the client had to free up the rented space in time and move to the new facility without disrupting the company’s business processes. SOLVO successfully managed to meet this objective. The project started in April and received its first vehicles in the beginning of August and became fully automated by November.«
In result of implementing Solvo.WMS at the warehouse, all major processes were automated – from receiving to shipping with the system supporting 85 simultaneous users.
Automation technologies
Lady & Gentleman CITY pays special attention to product quality. This is why all goods at the warehouse pass through a dual quality control system – during receiving as well as during order assembly prior to shipping.
The receiving of goods and outbound quality control is managed by Solvo.WMS via specialized work stations equipped with personal computers, barcode scanners, document and label printers. Solvo.WMS determines which percentage of incoming goods must pass through manual quality control during receiving (100% for returns). Meanwhile, the nonstandard item is marked in the system and is moved to the warehouse’s repair shop, which is also included in the topology of the management system.
To move the loads to various levels, the warehouse is equipped with conveyors and elevators. Solvo.WMS manages these transfers from one level to another and tracks the current location of each unit item using a configured transit route system.
Routes represent load transfer schemes from one zone to another via a »transit« zone. Routing is traditionally used at multi-level warehouses, at which load handling equipment or workers do not move between the levels.
In this case, the transit zone is the elevator, where the operator placed the picked load via a command in Solvo.WMS. Then the elevator is moved between floors and the load becomes available for transfer into the planned zone on another level of the warehouse. Moreover, the transfer of the load via transit zones can be carried out on a single level in the case if it is not possible to use the same transport to move the load from one zone to another. Depending on the topology of the warehouse move, Solvo.WMS will apply 2 different mechanisms to transfer loads via transit zones:
- Static mechanism, with which the system establishes the route to transfer a load to the destination location via a transit zone;
- Dynamic mechanism, with which the route is not established until the operator received the job. If the operator has access to the destination location, then the transit zone is not used. If the operator does not have access, then the system will offer to place the load into a transit zone. The job to transfer the load from a transit zone to the destination will wait until another operator carries out this task.
With the implementation of Solvo.WMS, it became possible to efficiently apply these technologies such as receiving by unit items – when receiving goods, commissioning – when assembling orders and replenishment – for optimizing storage.
The orders are assembled, as a rule, using waves with subsequent sorting by control locations. Quality control, during receiving as well as during order assembly, is carried out using accumulative scanning.
The processing of the »baggage« goods group is different in that various SKU items are placed one into another and a special method for tracking items during receiving and shipping is employed.
With Solvo.WMS, it became possible to carry out a pre-market preparation of goods right at the warehouse, if necessary, even before the shipping of orders to their retail outlets. This preparation includes an optional outbound quality control process and the labeling of goods with retail price tags.
When creating shipping items, weight control and the application of single-use seals for regional shipments are performed. Solvo.WMS accounts the weight of the load item and the seal number, which will be used subsequently at retail points, upon collating the planned and actual arrival of goods.
Lady & Gentleman CITY warehouse operators are equipped with state-of-the-art and reliable Scorpio X3 Wi-Fi data capture terminal, acquired from SOLVO, enabling real time management at the warehouse.
Greater Opportunities
The project included the implementation of the Billing module from SOLVO. The given module is used to calculate the cost of rendered services for secure storage, contracts and the preparation of documents for reports. Solvo.WMS directly interacts with the 1С system, with daily updates of the information sent to the warehouse as well as the cost of rendered services for secure storage.
Results
It must be noted that the warehouse was integrated with the out-of-the-box version of Solvo.WMS, specifically designed for distribution warehouse, which made it possible to carry out implementation in such a short time period despite the complexities of the given warehouse’s processes and the large number of employees.
Project Manager, Ilya Rubinchik: »The Solvo.WMS specifically designed for distribution and retail, which we used in the Lady & Gentleman CITY warehouse project, made it possible to automate the majority of complex technological processes at the warehouse by simply tweaking the configuration of already existing functions in the system without the help of any programmers. This was achieved by applying industry best practices that were used not only for automation projects at similar warehouses (fashion-industry), but also at pharmaceutical warehouses. We used the best technologies of Solvo.WMS.«
General Director of »Moshran,« Dmitryi Kremeshkov: »Thanks to our experience in working with goods assortment matrices and methods for processing them in SOLVO WMS, which met not only our requirements but the requirements of our clients as well, we have reached the highest level of accuracy and quality of warehouse operations.«