The Supply Chain Consulting Group Develops WMS Operational Requirements For The Global Winery
Set up by winemaker Martin Fowke in 2002, ‘The Global Winery’ is a family run company. Martin Fowke and his wife have been involved in the wine industry for over 25 years and have extensive experience in the production and bottling, of a variety of drinks products as well as selecting wines from vineyards around the world.
The Global Winery is primarily a contract packing company specialising in cooking alcohols, vinegars, glazes and flavoured ciders and cordials. It has a turnover of approximately £1.5M per annum with around 70% of the business providing co-packing, warehousing and customer direct despatch services for Gourmet Classic. In addition to the automated hot and cold bag fill and bottling lines, Global also carries out some blending processes. They currently despatch approximately 400 pallets of finished product per week.
Operating on manual systems to manage raw materials and finished good stock and all warehouse activities, The Global Winery management team identified the need to implement a WMS system with barcode capabilities into their operations and therefore required a WMS operational Requirements Specification.
The Global Winery sought expert support and advice to orchestrate this project and chose The Supply Chain Consulting Group (SCCG), for their experience within the Logistics Industry and WMS facility operations.
The SCCG team of Logistics and Supply Chain Consultants assigned a set of objectives in order to complete this project, which consisted of: establishing the full operational requirement specification for a suitable WMS system to meets the needs of the warehouse operations for at least the three-year planning horizon to simultaneously reflect the planned changes in procedures and volume throughputs; to identify potential WMS system providers and budget costs against the WMS requirement specification; and to develop appropriate Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for all functions within the warehouse to work in conjunction with the WMS specification.
Under the scope of this project, the experienced Consultants were required to show consideration for reviewing all current processes from goods receipt through finishing/processing to order despatch; review of service and delivery commitments and targets against each stock profiles; review of stock and inventory control requirements such as FIFO on food products; review of current and development of proposed warehouse processes, storage and picking layouts; review of Materials Handling Equipment (MHE) and resource requirements, and the development of a WMS operational requirement specification to suit the specific operational requirements; and to review and develop SOPs for all aspects of The Global Winery warehouse including picking/packing operations and WMS usage.
After conducting their reviews and upon completion of this project, SCCG provided The Global Winery with a full operational requirement specification for a suitable WMS system to meet the needs of both of their warehouse operations, whilst simultaneously reflecting planned changes in procedures and volume throughputs; A set of appropriate SOPs to work in conjunction with the WMS specification; provided recommendations on potential additional operational and process improvements identified during their warehouse operational review stage; Named potential WMS system providers and budget costs against The Global Winery’s WMS requirement specification with full barcode reading capability and associated scanning hardware. SCCG presented their deliverables alongside their suggested suitable recommendations for a suitable WMS system for The Global Winery company warehouse.
