When French group Tourpargel, which specialises in home delivery of frozen food, bought Frigedoc (Agrigel brand) in 2003 it was decided to implement a common system for the whole group consisting of SAP for purchasing and supply and Savoye for its LM7 warehouse management software interfacing with a Savoye material handling systems picking some four million orders a year.
The two projects, development of the buildings/infrastructure and the necessary software to manage the business, were run in tandem. Two sites were created: the first an 8,000 sq m facility at Argentan near Agrigel’s central warehouse capable of picking around four million orders per year and another at Montauban totalling 7,000 sq m with a cold room of 28,000 cubic metres and an annual capacity of some two million orders.
The switchover to Savoye’s LM7 software was realised without any problems, raising the performance progressively to correspond with the closure of the Agrigel warehouses. The two Tourpargel sites went over to the LM7 software and at the end of 2005 Civrieux’s cold room was extended from 7,000 cu m to 19,000 cu m. By mid-May the four sites were running up to speed and all the Agrigel warehouses were closed down. All orders for the same geographic area are now handled by the same platform and transported by the same truck to the agencies.
This new structure has improved both the quality of order picking and raised the level of productivity. The next step is to re-organise deliveries to further improve service to customers.
