Future-proofing with warehouse management systems (WMS)

A warehouse management system (WMS) with proven integration to enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions and in-depth inventory control capabilities can go long way to future proofing your distribution operation, Coastal Pet Products found.

The Alliance, Ohio-based manufacturer and distributor of pet products lacked a WMS solution, using a combination of existing ERP functionality for inventory data and a voice-directed picking solution to manage its warehouse processes. This lack of WMS prompted the management team to begin a search for a solution (Indigo) with proven integration capabilities as well as in depth WMS functions for real-time inventory management and other functions like cycle counting.

Coastal Pet Products is a multi-channel manufacturer of pet products including dog collars, harnesses and leashes. The company distributes goods from its 400,000-square-foot facility in Alliance. On a typical day, more than 90,000 items are picked from a 6,000 SKU product range and shipped to customers.

After evaluating different options, Indigo WMS was selected by the management team as the best fit because it could integrate with its existing ERP system from Infor, existing conveyor systems, plus a voice-directed solution from Honeywell Vocollect used for hands-free picking and replenishment.

Integration with other systems was a key requirement because one of the disadvantages of not having a dedicated WMS was a lack of real-time data. Updates to back-office systems were run in batch, and as result, warehouse data showing stock levels was always a day behind. This meant extra stock management shifts were needed on weekends to reconcile stock counts with actual order information.

The deployment went live in June 2021 as a remote implementation, completed during the pandemic. Since then, performance and process improvements have been made. Today, the WMS supports up to 85 associates and other users working concurrently with sub-second transaction processing capabilities. Fast transaction processing was an essential capability because during busy periods, three or more events need to be processed every second and each order needs a unique date and time stamp for auditing purposes.

Coastal Pet Products is also currently migrating to Oracle Netsuite ERP, and Indigo’s WMS consultants are working to ensure effective integration so inventory data is kept in near real-time sync between the two systems.

Dana Duff, IT department manager at Coastal Pet Products, says that from the start, the integration capabilities of the WMS and its implementation team gave the company confidence it made a good choice.

As Duff explains: “The company’s consulting team quickly developed an in-depth understanding of our business and how processes could be improved using their WMS technology, plus we’re very reassured by Indigo’s ERP integration capabilities, which had been proven across many reference sites.”

Overall, Coastal Pet’s investment in WMS has delivered significant productivity and cost savings, resulting from a higher order throughput each day. Even with this increase, the labor requirement needed to operate the warehouse has decreased since the system was deployed, allowing employees to be re-assigned to other areas of the business.

Operational improvements from the WMS include improved inventory management due to real-time cycle counting. As soon as products are picked, the operation is linked back into the cycle counting process and stock number changes immediately register in real time. The WMS guides associates to empty warehouse locations for put away of goods, improving space utilization.

“Although our picking was already optimized with voice picking, the lack of a WMS meant we could not process inventory transactions in real time and resulted in missing time-sensitive information about whether items have been picked from the location. This impacted our ability to accurately cycle count and improve stock auditing and replenishments. All these issues have been removed and because Indigo is a best practice system, it has helped us to tighten up all our processes for the better and ensure we have a much better grasp of total inventory.”  - Steve Caruso, project manager at Coastal Pet Products

Coastal Pet Products uses totes for multiple item orders and now benefits from location-driven replenishment to key pick points. The WMS drives the process, directing pickers to the correct totes to complete an order. This saves time, since the original process was entirely manual and operators would waste time searching through totes to find items.

Additionally, the new WMS builds quality checks into each order because the software requires each stage to be validated. It means mistakes are identified quickly and incorrect orders cannot end up in the dispatch area.

The new WMS helps reduce wasted time and consumables during labeling. Previously, the operation would generate rolls of labels in advance of picking orders, regardless of whether the items were required.

Up to 90,000 items are shipped daily from the warehouse, which meant more than a million labels would be printed every month, wasting money on consumables and time sorting the output and walking to and from fixed printer stations. Now, pickers use mobile devices and mobile printers to generate labels on demand, creating labor and consumables savings.