Background: 3663 First for Foodservice, a market-leader in the foodservice sector, pride themselves on delivering a first class service to their customers, including Burger King, Nando’s, KFC and Pizza Hut, among others. As a forward thinking company they utilise strong IT solutions combined with their business knowledge to meet the changing requirements of this highly demanding environment.
3663 use the Minster Logistics software extensively in their logistics business to provide an end-to-end solution, including sales order processing, purchase order management and warehouse management. Through the 20 year strong relationship with Minster, 3663 have been able to influence the design of new modules, resulting in a fully functional complete system to support the logistics sector.
The Challenge:
In their drive to constantly improve the service provided to their customers, 3663 identified that a fully voice-enabled solution in the warehouse would deliver many benefits and enhanced internal operation.
They recognised that allowing all of their warehouse functions to be controlled through the use of voice and headsets rather than the traditional methods of paper or bar-code scanning would be far more practical, accurate and productive – especially in the harsher environments like freezer chambers.
Minster’s fully voice enabled warehouse management solution was selected, and it became apparent that the fully integrated voice solution would provide other significant benefits.
The implementation started initially with goods receipt and put-away, then through the process of regular, controlled software updates over an 18 month period, a truly end-to-end solution emerged, incorporating: replenishment, picking, marshalling, loading, cross docking, perpetual inventory and stock take solutions. 3663 now have a fully voice enabled version of the Minster Logistics system operating across three depots.
The Benefits:
Minsters’ knowledge of voice enablement combined with 3663’s desire for the project to succeed meant that the expected benefits were achieved, including improvements in stock accuracy and an uplift in productivity in the warehouse.
However, it is the less expected benefits of voice that have really added value to 3663’s operation and their levels of service:
• The ability of the system to support hands-free working in the harshest of environments such as the freezer chambers, has helped improve the productivity of the overall team.
• Minster Logistics’ productivity analysis enables the supervisors to drill down into the activity of each member of their team to understand their pick rates and idle time as well as using audit information to dramatically improve the resolution of customer queries
• The warehouse supervisors are released to focus on the important issues. They can let the system manage the replenishment activity automatically, significantly improving the first time pick rate, while enabling them to deal with specific queries on an exception basis.
• 3663 have a clear environmental policy and voice has enabled them to support it through reduced paper, printing materials and consumables as well as eliminating clutter in the warehouse.
Shaun Foley, Operations Director for 3663 Logistics commented “The use of the voice enabled Minster solution over the last three years has had significant positive benefits for our business. The increased levels of accuracy combined with enhanced productivity has allowed us to continue to advance the service we provide to our customers and manage improved throughput without further impact on staffing”
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