About the client
The Tsaritsyno Group of Companies has been operating on the domestic market of the food industry for over 35 years. Apart from three meat=processing plants Tsaritsyno also includes “Tsarytsinskoe Podvorye” that supplies the Moscow market with a wide range of bakery and “Trademark Trading House Tsaritsyno”. The company supplies almost 340 cities in Russia and the CIS with its produce.
The rapidly growing Tsaritsyno Group of Companies is implementing the stategy of multi-profile business. One of the company’s new lines of activity is providing high quality service on the storage of products of third-party producers. As part of the development of this business form a modern warehouse complex was constructed with emphasis on having a wide range of storage conditions and a high level of automation.
Situation
Despite the impressive total area of existing warehouses in Moscow and the Moscow Region, demand for warehouse space in the region significantly exceeds supply, which is related to growing business volumes of both trading companies and manufacturing enterprises.
In order to meet this need of the market, Tsaritsyno Group made the decision to develop a new line of activity – providing logistics services. With this in mind a modern warehouse is being built with a large area of 8 ha and a total capacity of 9.5 pallets. Useful space of storage chambers amounts to around 14.4 thousand square meters, the number of loading and off-loading docks – to 35. Optimization of operation and management of warehouse resources of such a scale was made possible mainly due to the implementation of efficient IT tools.
Choice of solution
Cutting edge technologies do not always guarantee business success. An important particularity of the IT-project launched at Trademark Trading House Tsaritsyno is the selection of the optimum solution, which would be efficient in practice. This was a particularly crucial issue, as Trademark Trading House Tsaritsyno did not have any experience in forming the corresponding business processes and their automation, when entering the market of logistics providers that it was new to. This is why the choice of solution was especially thorough. Based on business needs of Trademark Trading House Tsaritsyno twelve criterion were developed for the selection of both the automation system and the executor of the project. First the comprehensive enterprise management system was determined - Microsoft Dynamics AX and then the partner in project implementation –GMCS consulting company.
Solution
As part of the project tasks were being accomplished on the automation of placement of goods, off-loading, inventory accounting and accounting of the work of warehouse personnel.
The project was carried out by GMCS consultants according to the step-by-step implementation methodology, developed and widely used in the company’s projects, - starting from assessment, system design, setup and pilot operation of the system and up to its launch into industrial operation.
A particularity of the –project was the fact that automation of business processes was being carried out at an inactive facility. Tsaritsyno was just starting to form processes that were going to determine the principles of functioning of the new warehouse. This is why the assessment phase was one of the key stages of the project. During this stage work was being done on future business processes, which were then to be implemented and tested during pilot operation.
Due to the fact that providing storage services for third-party companies was a completely new form of activity for Trademark Trading House Tsaritsyno, it was necessary to foresee all the possible future directions of development of the WMS-solution. To do so, during the design and setup of the warehouse management system, the possibility was introduced for further expansion of its functionality. This approach allows to quickly and efficiently redesign operations in the terminal in conditions of transformation of business targets.
Functionality of the implemented system is currently being used only partially – operations of the warehouse use up just 15% of the system’s potential, in the future it may be used to solve the issues of pricing, automation of 3 PL-operator services and fully-featured financial accounting.
The next stage of the project – pilot operation of the system – was conducted using hoax goods in conditions as close as possible to operating conditions. After its completion the system was successfully launched into operation.
Results
As a result of the completed project the procedure of goods traffic servicing was automated, high efficiency and transparency of recourse management of the warehouse complex were ensured, technology of addressed storage was introduced. For round the clock support of the system’s operation by the client, GMCS consultants conducted training of Tsaritsyno IT personnel.
At the moment the warehouse complex is operating successfully, servicing both own and client cargo.
The warehouse is able to accept maintenance responsibility of a large range of produce and designed for a cargo turn-over of up to 1000 tons per day. Thanks to the implemented solution the Trademark Trading House Tsaritsyno terminal operates not only with piece goods, but also with goods sold by weight - traditionally considered the most difficult matter in logistics. The system doesn’t just distinguish the category of the good, it also account for the particularity of storage of goods sold by weight – their natural loss in weight during storage.
Currently approximately 400 vehicles daily deliver goods to various outlets.
Projects
