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Tissue and paper products manufacturer Georgia Pacific, the company behind household brands Lotus, KittenSoft and Thirst Pockets, has automated warehouse management at its 350,000 square foot pallet distribution centre near Wigan, Lancashire, using Warehouse Management from RedPrairie.
Warehouse Management interfaces seamlessly with the companys SAP back office, creating integrated business flows across the entire manufacturing warehousing and distribution cycle.
Georgia Pacific chose RedPrairie for its proven leadership of the European WMS market, demonstrated by live sites and referenceable SAP installations. Warehouse Management met most of Georgia Pacifics requirements out of the box, was implemented in three months and went live without disrupting day-to-day operations.
Warehouse Management has streamlined all warehouse management tasks at the 24/7 distribution centre. Yard management costs have been halved using Warehouse Managements point-and-click functionality to synchronise arrival schedules with the availability of yard personnel, manage vehicle check-in and minimise trailer moves around the depot. Automated RDT-controlled task management has increased worker productivity by 20%. Real-time traceability of consignments has eliminated the risk of lost items and increased order accuracy from 94% to 100%.
Georgia Pacific uses RedPrairies cycle counting capabilities to streamline stocktaking by interleaving routine inventory checks with putaway and picking tasks. This enables the company to gain up-to-the-minute visibility of inventory levels and enjoy 99.9% stock level accuracy. Real-time warehouse management, combined with RedPrairies advanced storage calculation algorithms, has optimised space utilisation, resulting in a 12% increase in warehouse capacity. As a result the company no longer needs to rent off-site storage facilities to accommodate warehouse overspills. The efficiencies generated by Warehouse Management enabled us to achieve a 100% return on investment just nine months after implementation, says Mark Dykes, Warehouse Manager for the British Isles.
Less than two years after the initial implementation, Georgia Pacific is now planning to leverage performance improvements and cost savings by implementing RedPrairie at its other European distribution centres in Wales, Ireland and Finland. Warehouse Management has transformed our operations in Wigan and enabled us to exceed key performance indicators for efficiency improvements, says Dykes. We are confident that it will enable us to achieve similar results at our other sites.
Georgia Pacific has demonstrated how Warehouse Management can deliver rapid and significant investment returns through the implementation of proven, world-class, best-practice processes, comments RedPrairie Managing Director and President - International, Martin Hiscox. We look forward to strengthening our partnership with Georgia Pacific and helping the company maximise the benefits of Warehouse Management for its European operations.
About Georgia Pacific
Georgia Pacific was founded in 1927 as a hardwood lumber yard in Augusta, Georgia. The company is now one of the worlds leading manufacturers and distributors of pulp, paper and packaging products. Georgia Pacific is now the second largest manufacturer and distributor of tissue and paper products in the UK with 163 products and a 23% market share. In addition to its own household name brands Lotus, KittenSoft and Thirst Pocket brands, Georgia Pacific manufactures own-label products for leading supermarkets.
About RedPrairie
RedPrairie is a world leading consumer driven optimisation company. Built on an advanced Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) developed over the past 10 years, the RedPrairie integrated suite of solutions offers on-demand capabilities to over 25,000 sites worldwide for many of the worlds largest companies. RedPrairies E2e solutions synchronise people and products throughout the customer buying cycle to ensure goods reach the right place at the right time. At the point of sale, this means consumers have access to desired products and that the store is staffed with the right people to help them make their purchases. In the production cycle, it means suppliers and manufacturers time and synchronise shipments and production based on demand signals from the retailer. And in the back room of the store, it means having the least amount of inventory, solving the last yard problem of the retail supply chain.
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