French surgical adhesives supplier Laboratoires Urgo chose Savoye’s LM7 warehouse management software for its Chevigny St Sauveur site where finished product is consolidated from a number of production sites and from where boxes and pallets are dispatched to hospitals, wholesalers, pharmacists and doctors.
The main challenge for the WMS was in the optimisation of preparation orders to improve customer service rates. It was crucial to Urgo that it achieved maximum productivity each day and was able to smooth the workload as far as possible to ensure no workshop was under used.
LM7 manages the entire order preparation activity including: controlling a conveyor system for both full cases and split cases with the management of multiple order preparation stations; a preparation zone for ugly products and full pallets; and palletisation of boxes prior to dispatch.
The LM-WCS module integrated into the LM7 suite was used to control the conveyor system, the pallet trucks and the pick to light displays.
LM7 optimises stock positions while taking account of production flows and it controls all stock operations – goods in, despatch, internal flows, replenishment and inventories – as well as managing the exchanges with SAP.
Mastering goods flows and batch traceability are fully integrated as a standard functionality for each logistical process and in the picking zone the batch number statement is recorded at each pick, allowing product traceability in real time.
Patrice Caulfuty Urgo’s information systems director says: “LM7 has integrated perfectly into our information system. Thanks to its well defined interfaces it checks and drives the flow of information from SAP to the computer integrated material handling system.”
During the five months creating the functional methodology, the members of the project team met weekly implementing a programme of sequencing and validating each stage of the process. A testing program was carried out jointly by both Urgo and Savoye team members for some seven months culminating in the Urgo operators receiving 47 days training.
