Davant Products, a supplier of plumbing, drainage and insulation products to major retail and trade outlets, is benefiting from an advanced wireless warehouse management system (WMS) from Balloon One. The integrated Accellos WMS is maximising customer service to clients such as B&Q, Wickes and Travis Perkins, helping it win new business and encourage old clients to return to Davant as word spreads about the company's new efficiencies.
The system has already paid for itself by reducing stock costs from 1.75 million to 1.25 million in just 11 months.
The WMS integrates seamlessly with Davant's SAP Business One enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, enabling swift and accurate order fulfilment. It also simplifies the complex management of Davant extensive stock of more than 3000 product lines and keeping stock levels optimised.
"Balloon One showed us that we would be able to link our ERP system to the WMS to automate the warehouse. The system would revolutionise the warehouse with the introduction of radio frequency handheld scanners with mobile computing capability and barcoding technology. This would provide a host of immediate benefits that would boost our efficiencies," says Jeff Pryce, Operations Manager, Davant Products.
The WMS went into action following only a few days of training and its impact was immediate.
"We had a one day overview session for managers and team leaders. The warehouse staff only needed a two and one half day training programme to get to grips with the system. We ran a live trial for a week and then went live. We saw the benefit immediately as it introduced a new, more consistent and compliant way of working that improved the entire operation. Most importantly, our customers noticed the improvement and are benefiting from our investment in the system," says Jeff Pryce.
"The system is very intuitive and it means that anyone can work in the warehouse if we need additional support. This is because the system guides the warehouse staff through the jobs they need to do and they simply have to follow the instructions presented to them on the handhelds. It has also meant we have been able to reduce the size of the picking team while making huge improvements in picking speed; we are picking and picking accurately in a third of the time," he adds.
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