BD International, the exclusive distributor of Nike sportswear for six African countries used IntraLogisteX to find the right suppliers to boost its warehouse performance.
The aim was to accurately and speedily receive product cartons into a bonded warehouse, store the products in pre-determined locations and despatch them with 100 per cent traceability and accuracy.
Denis Gatt, BDI operations manager and George Amato, director of parent company Hudson Holdings (Malta) visited IntraLogisteX trade exhibition in the UK in search of a suitable sorter. Stockrail International were chosen as the supplier of the sorter hardware and during discussions with Mark Howarth, Stockrail sales director, it was suggested that Red Ledge was used as the systems integrator.
Using the new system Nike sends advance notice of both trailer content and destination of each product to BDI. Using this information, BDI create a sort plan using the Red Ledge system. Upon arrival, cartons are unloaded directly from the trailer onto flexi-conveyor, then onto a powered roller conveyor. The cartons are automatically separated, scanned and sent to the correct sorter spur. At each spur the cartons are scanned onto awaiting pallets (the number of pallets required at each spur is determined using the Red Ledge sort planner). Once a pallet is full, a message is sent to the warehouse operative who collects the pallet. The Red Ledge system then ensures the pallet is put-away (scanned) to the correct location. The sorter has two modes allowing both carton sorting and individual product sorting, while the Red Ledge WMS ensures total traceability of product. Once outbound shipping is organised, the WMS ensures the correct consolidated products are picked and despatched for each destination country.
“We were very happy to be working with Red Ledge” says Howarth. “We could supply the materials handling kit, but the project simply couldn’t be done without the Red Ledge control system”.
