Whisky specialist Gordon & MacPhail, reckons that the implementation of BCP’s Accord Voice WMS at its warehouse operation in Elgin, Scotland is delivering productivity increases of 50 per cent.
“The main driver for bringing in a Voice system for our business was looking at excellence of service within our wholesaling operation” says Neil Urquhart, Gordon & MacPhail director of logistics & facilities, who headed up the project.”
The company was using a paper based system in the warehouse and looking to modernise, improve efficiency and visibility and to have the capacity to effectively handle future growth of the business. The flexibility and functionality that came with the BCP system proved decisive, says Urquhart.
The requirements at Gordon & MacPhail are complex as the wholesale operation supplies a range of different products to a range of different customers across the UK. This could be one bottle of wine to a pub on a high street development, a pallet of one product to a national distribution centre for a multiple or a pallet of 250 different items, cases and bottles, to a specialist wine & spirit wholesaler.
Urquhart says: “We have a complex offering with over 4,000 products which we sell in either full cases, loose bottles or any combination demanded and we needed a system that had the flexibility and functionality to accommodate that complexity.”
One of the main benefits realised from the implementation of Accord Voice has been increased productivity – a 50 per cent increase in the number of cases picked per person and a 43 per cent increase in the number of lines per person. Picking accuracy was already good, but this has improved it further. “With the Accord system we now have full visibility of exactly when there’s an order picked and who picked it so if we do have picking errors occurring we can quickly identify exactly why they happened and go back, retrain and minimise that happening in the future.”
The system has also allowed simplification and streamlining of administration behind the scenes and reporting on all the orders that have left the business so that invoicing can be done promptly to improve cash flow. Savings on paper costs alone are running at £2,000 a year.
With the system bedded in, the company is now looking at how it can take on more of the functionality within it to make full use of its investment.
