“Overall Indigo impressed us a great deal by being a ‘can do’ company with a very positive attitude to working with Tetrosyl. Everyone was enthusiastic, their WMS was robust and they stood out compared to other providers.” – Barry Rennie, Site Manager, Tetrosyl
Tetrosyl has manufactured and supplied car care products since 1954 and became a household name in the ‘60s with the launch of ‘T-Cut’ body restorer. Today it’s a leading manufacturer and supplier of car care products, valeting and lubricants. Together with automotive spares and home improvement products, they ship over £120m of product into Europe and wider afield each year.
Tetrosyl manufactures its entire product range from two sites in Bury and operations need to cope with a high degree of seasonality. During the winter months, business is predominantly focused on producing and shipping winter care products, such as screen wash and de-icer, whereas at other times of the year, demand for other complimentary ranges is consistently high, for example T-Cut, polish and paints. In total, the company produces approximately 5,000 SKUs, which equates to 200,000 pallets being shipped from the Oldham warehouse or Bury manufacturing sites per annum.
To cope with its busy periods, Tetrosyl relies on having a logistics operation with the flexibility to assign dispatches to either the warehouse, or for larger orders, straight from the end of the production line. “Our production sites and DC are located within a tight 15 mile radius and in the winter when demand for antifreeze and screen wash can be insatiable, we need the flexibility of choosing where and how to fulfill shipments from, in order to meet sales order demands on time”, says Barry Rennie, Site Manager at Tetrosyl.
This flexibility is important to Tetrosyl because it means they are able to avoid the need to recruit large numbers of extra workers during busy periods, representing a significant cost saving. “We might have to do a little bit of extra recruitment in the winter months but because we can ship full truck loads straight from the production line, we can manage most of the increased volume with in-house resources,” says Barry Rennie. At its peak, this means shipping in excess of 1500 pallets a day.
Infor’s ERP solution is deployed across Tetrosyl and shortly after completing this implementation; the company also added a WMS solution to manage logistics operations. Within a short space of time, it became apparent that the tool originally selected was unable to provide the breadth of functionality and operational flexibility Tetrosyl needed and the company began to seek an alternative. Limitations of the former system included poor interfacing with the host ERP system, which created information processing delays and the range of warehouse processes that could be automated was very limited.
Following a competitive tendering process, Indigo’s WMS was selected as the ideal replacement solution. It could integrate seamlessly with Infor’s ERP, provided a high level of out of the box functionality and further customisation, to suit the specificities of Tetrosyl’s seasonal manufacturing and distribution operations, were straightforward and cost effective.
Prior to implementation, Indigo’s project management and development teams worked very closely with Tetrosyl’s warehouse management. This time invested meant they could ensure the specifications for each software module exactly matched their workflow processes and alterations could be built into the system from the outset. “We went through each of our warehouse processes step by step and the time invested meant we got exactly what we needed and could maximize the benefits to our warehouse systems,” said Barry Rennie.
The implementation itself went smoothly and the solution was live within 3 months. In a short space of time, Indigo’s WMS improved picking speeds and accuracy by providing real time data capture and allowing picked products to be assigned a marshalling location. Prior to implementing Indigo, this shortfall in their previous WMS system created inefficiencies because time would be wasted during a large pallet pick searching for goods before they could be loaded onto vehicles for dispatch. Now, with Indigo, all products can be scanned and assigned a particular location, so that when Tetrosyl’s loaders require an order, they can go straight to the right location with no time wasted.
Multisite dispatch was another important benefit provided by Indigo’s WMS and has been key to facilitating increased capacity levels, because it allowed Tetrosyl to nominate where orders could be shipped from.
Tetrosyl’s investment in Indigo has made a significant business impact and a return on investment was achieved within 12 months. Savings were seen across the warehouse and as a result of overall improved productivity, Tetrosyl has achieved 10% greater throughput capacity without the need to employ additional resources, especially during busy winter periods. The value of this has been estimated in the region of £202,500 per annum by enabling the warehouse to increase shipments to 200,000 pallets per year and avoid extra manpower costs.
In addition, Tetrosyl’s warehouse management has real-time access to detailed productivity data for each warehouse operator to highlight process inefficiency problems and whether additional training is required. Using Indigo, operators became more accountable and set their own productivity targets based on highest performance levels achieved, which in turn, has translated into higher productivity levels across the warehouse at Tetrosyl. “Indigo has given us a level of control we never had before. Shift managers can monitor operations at a glance from their offices, giving us the flexibility to remotely assign work allocations and control productivity levels – in this respect it’s much more effective than having management continually pace the warehouse floor”, says Barry Rennie.
Looking back, Tetrosyl has commented that one of the biggest strengths of Indigo’s software is reliability and breadth of functionality. “It is very functional, gives us a high degree of control and is stable. Warehouse processes are not glamorous and Indigo does exactly what is says on the tin. If we need extra features or support, we know we can work closely together with the development specialists at Indigo to customise the WMS to suit our exact requirements,” concludes Barry Rennie.
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