Warehouse Management Success story Simmonds Transport, NOM
Dairies and Clydebuilt Solutions create recipe for success
Telford-based Simmonds Transport has delighted one of its major customers by providing a completely seamless integration into its warehousing system. Simmonds integrated its LocateIT WMS with NOM Dairies SAP to facilitate a faster, real-time flow of information between the two companies.
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trategically placed to serve the UK from the West Midlands, Simmonds Transport has been in business for 36 years, offering transport, warehousing and value- added services such as contract packing. Simmonds has expanded its operation over the years and increased its warehouse facility from 20,000 to 100,000 sq ft. During the years of working on the 20,000 sq ft site Simmonds was using a warehousing ‘bolt-on’ from a Transport Management System. Neil Simmonds, sales director at Simmonds Transport, was working on the floor and quickly realised the limitations of the system in use. More importantly, he realised that if he were going to take the business forward, this definitely wasn’t the system to use.
Being a member of Palletline, the UK palletised distribution specialist, Neil asked his peers about the systems they were using with a view to selecting a new supplier. LocateIT WMS from Clydebuilt Solutions was chosen, and is currently in use at over 25 per cent of Palletline member sites. LocateIT was chosen as it was reportedly far more advanced than the system being used, and after seeing it in action in other sites Neil was impressed by its usability and user friendliness. In terms of functionality, Neil said LocateIT covered everything required. Even now he comments that “constant system improvements every year enable confidence
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IT July 2011
in the system”, and he is “confident that it manages now and will continue to do so into the future”.
The initial implementation of the system afforded Simmonds immediate benefits. LocateIT helped to speed up all of the company’s processes and allowed for easier access to more accurate information. Neil describes LocateIT as being clear and concise, and not complicated. The speed of
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natural ingredients, as it was looking for a new third-party warehouse to store raw materials. NOM was impressed with how Simmonds was running the warehouse and decided to use the company as its outsourced warehousing partner. It suggested that Simmonds implement a SAP terminal and carry out all NOM work on that terminal. Looking to maintain consistency within their operations and, more importantly, not wanting to create any duplicate entry, Neil suggested that
I was confident throughout that it would work having confidence in
Clydebuilt, and at no point did I worry that it wouldn’t work,” said Neil. “Clydebuilt’s experience in integration was fantastic. They gave specifications of file formats and helped NOM map out required fields and the data flow.” – Neil Simmonds, Simmonds Transport.
loading orders and issuing picks increased significantly, and of particular use to Simmonds was the Grid View, providing users with a graphical representation of the warehouse floor, with the ability to click on a location to view the status of pallets housed there.
Operational consistency
Simmonds was approached by NOM Dairies, the Shropshire-based dairy which manufactures high-quality yoghurts from
system integration between LocateIT and SAP would be the most effective route, as he knew that Clydebuilt had completed similar integration work before.
Working with NOM account managers within Simmonds, Steve Powell and Dave Smith, as well as Jamie Barr from Clydebuilt, Neil’s team helped define requirements with NOM staff, James Holmes and Dave Simco. The whole process took 6 weeks from start to finish, and the day the link switched on Simmonds received 250 pallets into the warehouse and despatched 50 with no hiccups. “I was confident throughout
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