Bart Spices relocated to a 30,000 sq ft warehouse and implemented a WMS which could cope better with its expanding volumes.
Proteus supplied the system, which covers all warehouse functions from receipt, put-away and replenishment, to dispatch and managing inventory.
Operations director JimDorman says: “Over the last few years the business has been growing rapidly, the breadth of the range has widened, and type of products has varied, and we have beenmanaging these changes in the context of ever more stringent requirements from our customers for accuracy, quality and service.
“The [previous] Sage Swan systemsimply provided a paper pick list and did not help significantly with location and batch control, and stock rotation. I wanted to make a step change and implement a system that could support our business needs for many years into the future.
“We needed to think ahead so that our systems and procedures would readily support growth and change,” he says. Maintaining high service levels had at times been “at the expense of considerable time and effort,” he adds.
The Proteus systemuses wireless hand-held terminals with barcode scanners from Psion Teklogix. The system handles batch control, ensuring that stock is rotated strictly in order. The system can hold bestbefore date, expiry date, and production or receipt date and the system will base rotation on any of those dates as selected by the user.
Dorman says: “The system has been a catalyst for introducing new procedures and disciplines that we should have been using all along but were difficult to manage with our old warehouse and systems,” Scanning every movement means that the stock figures can be updated in real-time.
