Apple City Corps has transferred warehouse logistics under AXELOT WMS X5 management
Yuri Zhdanov, Head of International Sales, AXELOT:
"The IT market in Kazakhstan today is rapidly developing. This is facilitated by the changed world logistics, which creates increased loads on the spheres of transportation, distribution, Retail and others. Accordingly, companies are interested in reliable automation tools. Qualitative development of the market is also promoted by the arrival of IT specialists from Russia and Belarus. But there is a shortage of high-quality managers of large IT projects, and against the background of the demand for automation it is increasingly necessary to attract such teams from abroad".
With the help of AXELOT WMS X5 in the warehouse of the company "Apple City Corps" realized control of expiration dates of goods, which significantly reduced the number of returns due to discrepancies in the residual shelf life. The system controls the actions of personnel and does not allow to make mistakes in the process of selection of goods.
Apple City Corps LLP is one of the largest distributors in Central Asia and Kazakhstan. The main activity of the company is distribution of goods of the world's leading manufacturers in the FMCG sector.
The company has 24 regional representative offices, its own extensive fleet of cars and trucks, and the total area of the company's warehouses is about 80,000 square meters. meters. meters. Well-developed logistics is one of the key competencies that underpinned the successful operation of Apple City Corps LLP. The company's specialists have experience in a wide range of supply chain tasks: from organizing transportation from factories to managing Customer Service for key customers of modern retail.
The company migrated its warehouse logistics management to a solution from AXELOT. Flexible and productive system AXELOT WMS X5 even in the boxed version covered the company's needs and left a significant margin of safety for further development.
Prerequisites for implementation and first results
The key reason why the management of Apple City Corps decided to implement a new WMS was the mismatch with the business needs. The functionality of the old system did not allow to automate warehouse processes to the fullest extent. In addition, making any changes had to be agreed and discussed with the developer for a long time, and the cost of making these improvements was very significant.
Against this background, the developed functionality of AXELOT WMS X5 even in the boxed version became an undeniable plus. In addition, the customer appreciated the flexibility of AXELOT WMS X5 settings, thanks to which the system was easy to adapt to business processes without involving programmers.
The pilot project was implemented by AXELOT specialists at the Apple City Corps warehouse in Almaty. The area of the warehouse complex of class "A" is 2500 square meters, and the assortment is about 2500 SKU. There are two temperature modes of storage - "warm warehouse" and "refrigerator". Implementation of a new WMS-solution allowed to significantly revise and optimize the organization of warehouse processes.
After the implementation of AXELOT WMS X5 warehouse employees no longer need to monitor the expiration dates of goods, WMS automatically selects the storage location where the goods with the necessary characteristics are located. At the same time it is possible to assign different allowable shelf life periods for different counterparties. For example, for category A stores goods with expiration dates that expire in at least 65 days are shipped, and for category B and C stores goods with any unexpired expiration date are shipped. A motivational scheme was developed and implemented to calculate the bonus part for line personnel, which helps to improve the performance of each individual employee.
AXELOT WMS X5 system administrators were also trained, thanks to which the company managed to form its own center of competence and not only to provide independent "first line" support for system users, but also to build a process of independent verification of correctness of process setup, full and partial testing of functionality, system work with changes.
Replication to a non-food warehouse
The excellent results of the pilot project - both in terms of growth of the warehouse performance and in terms of opportunities for further development - prompted the company's management to replicate AXELOT WMS X5 to the warehouse of non-food products.
The "No Food" warehouse is bigger than the "pilot" one - its area is 6000 square meters, it stores a larger number of goods items (about 7000 SKU), it has a higher productivity and more employees work there. The flexibility of system settings and scalability allowed to transfer the solution developed within the first project to a more complex and intensive warehouse. The peculiarities of the business processes of this site were also taken into account within the framework of additional customizations.
For example, in the algorithm of replenishment of the piece picking area from the pallet area a waiting mechanism was implemented. WMS plans a task to move a pallet, and as soon as space is available in the piece picking zone, the replenishment task is activated. The mechanism of additional request in the mobile client has been implemented, which allows to maximize the collection of the order for one pallet. Now, at the end of the picking process, before the collected pallet is moved to the ready orders area, the employee performs an additional inquiry to see if there are any more tasks for this order. New picking tasks could appear after replenishment, and if they were available, the corresponding information was transmitted to the picker's terminal and a task for execution was formed. This algorithm allows to avoid situations when some small goods from the order are collected on a new pallet, but not on the already collected pallet.
Transition to AXELOT WMS X5 for "Apple City Corps" became an important strategic decision, which inextricably links effective business development with the need to use the best IT products. As a result of the project, not only the qualitative and quantitative indicators of warehouse operation have increased, the company now has extensive opportunities for further development and optimization of logistics using modern automation tools.
In recent years, the term “Internet of Things” (IoT) has become one of the most popular in the tech world. It promised to connect billions of devices. The next stage was the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), which brought revolutionary changes to production processes. Today, a new term is coming onto the scene – AIoT (Artificial Intelligence of Things), combining the capabilities of the Internet of Things with the power of AI.
Sixty-eight IT executives from 15 countries, including Brazil, India, USA, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Kazakhstan, and Indonesia participated in the project.
June 2024 was a very dynamic month for AI and data analytics market, marked by significant events, product launches, and industry insights.
Artem Kalivanov, CIO of Beeline Uzbekistan, discussed IT project management in terms of project definition, management models like Waterfall and Agile methodologies, and the importance of Lean in process management.