Alliance Flooring Distribution in Kidderminster was subsequently acquired in April 2005 taking the combined stock capacity of both companies’ to nearly a million square metres of carpet. As the Alliance warehouse operation was paper based, it was considered that it would make sense to implement new barcode scanning and wireless mobile computers at this site first. Sandpiper was asked to recommend a real-time rugged mobile computing solution to meet the needs of both the Alliance and Abingdon warehouses.
The Datalogic Viper was selected and commissioned in January 2006. Sandpiper’s FocusID solution meant no capital approval was required, and the costs over the three years would be known and fixed.
In July 2006, driven by the unreliability and escalating repair costs of the legacy system, Abingdon Flooring decided to engage Sandpiper to deploy the new system at the Crumlin site which coincided with the start of the project to physically extend the warehouse.
Sandpiper delivered both systems under its FocusID managed service. The hand-held computers, wireless infrastructure, professional implementation services, support and maintenance are all included in a fixed monthly cost per device.
