Midland Chilled Foods rebuilds with Körber WMS after devastating fire.
As Midlands Chilled Foods finished designing and building its new warehouse management system with Balloon, there was an air of excitement. Months of hard work, planning and anticipation were coming to an end and the company’s new WMS would soon go live.
“We were just going into the main user acceptance testing,” recalls Steve Rooney, Head of IT. “Everything was set up and running smoothly on the test servers. We were almost ready to go live.”
But then, disaster struck. A devastating fire ripped through the company’s warehouse, turning the excitement into despair. With no backups of the test servers, the warehouse system was lost. However, Midland Chilled Foods would demonstrate remarkable resilience and determination to come through the catastrophe, working with Balloon to rebuild and implement the WMS once again.
About Midland Chilled Foods.
Midland Chilled Foods is a tier 1 food distribution company established in 1976. It supplies a broad range of frozen, chilled and ambient foods to wholesale, retail, foodservice and hospitality customers.
The company is part of the Granarolo Group, Europe’s leading dairy company, which enables it to also supply a large number of continental cheeses. Prior to the fire, Midland Chilled Foods also had its own production plant, where it manufactured its own pastry-based products, including pies, sausage rolls and baked slices.
From its two warehouses – located in Willenhall, West Midlands and Basingstoke, Hampshire – it provides a nationwide delivery service to customers using its own fleet of vans and lorries.
The challenges of paper-based warehousing.
Before implementing a new WMS, Midland Chilled Foods was processing its sales and purchases using Microsoft Dynamics GP. The ERP system would pass the orders onto the warehouse in paper format.
Under this paper-based system, the warehouse operatives would receive paper picking lists, which they would use to tick off each item as it was picked and placed on a pallet. The lists were then returned afterwards, to be entered into Microsoft Dynamics GP. Received goods were also manually keyed into the system.
The need to record catchweights was also complicating things. Steve says, “We buy and sell many of our products by weight, so the staff note those details on paper as we receive or pick and then that’s logged into the system.”
Not only did this create unnecessary manual admin, but it also caused significant delays in obtaining accurate stock information. Orders were grouped and dealt with in one go, rather than processed throughout the day. So, it was only at the end of each shift that the details were fed back into the ERP system. Steve says, “We had no indication of what was going on in the warehouse until the orders came back into the system towards the end of the day.”
To mitigate this, Steve explains that the staff were making regular stock counts, but with anything up to 1,300 products in each of the two depots, this was a laborious and time-consuming process – and it too was paper-based.
The entire system was suffering issues with accuracy. Steve says: “We had errors being recorded on the picking sheets and pieces of paper getting lost. There were so many mistakes, but the staff were just getting on with it and trying to find ways around it.”
Another issue was that it was taking up to two months to train new pickers. Steve says: “The warehouse is laid out logically, but they need to learn where everything is. It also takes a good while to get used to specific needs of some of our customers who require certain use-by dates.”
Steve continues, “With our manual, paper-based processes and lack of stock visibility, there was no room for expansion.” The company was also lacking performance and productivity figures, which made it very difficult to grow the warehouse operation in a strategic way.
Ultimately, it was time for something better and the CEO asked the IT team to find a warehouse management system that would afford the company the opportunity to grow.
Midland Chilled Foods selects Balloon and Körber WMS.
Steve researched warehouse software and was initially looking to implement a third-party bolt on for Microsoft Dynamics GP.
The team was set to go ahead, when Steve had a chance conversation with the company’s server supplier. Steve recalls: “He highlighted some of the limitations of the software we were planning on using, especially how it didn’t manage catchweights well. He recommended Balloon and Körber WMS as a good solution for us.”
After some further research, Steve concluded that the initial choice was little more than an interface that allowed information to be imported into Dynamics GP using wireless scanners. He realised that the company would be missing out on functionality that would give them the opportunity to manage the warehouse more effectively.
Steve decided to rethink the whole project and to reassess the options. He says, “The more we dug in and the more we checked functionality, the more I came to understand that Körber WMS was the right system for us.”
The process also changed his way of thinking about warehouse management systems in general. He explains: “I thought we could use WMS software just as an extension to Dynamics GP to put a stop to all those pieces of paper. By using a scanner to import the information into the ERP, I thought the ERP would remain central to everything. But we didn’t yet fully understand what we needed and didn’t appreciate that there is so much extra functionality with a WMS that an ERP can never get close to.”
Massive setback as fire devastates the warehouse.
After deciding to partner with Balloon and to implement Körber WMS, Steve and the team began by scoping out the requirements and having the system customised to fit those unique needs. They were about to enter the critical testing phase and were prepared for the final steps before going live when fire struck the Willenhall facility.
The blaze was catastrophic. It resulted in the loss of the entire production plant and 60% of the warehousing. All the IT infrastructure was destroyed, including the test servers that hosted the soon-to-be launched WMS. With no backups of the test environment, all the progress that had been made was reduced to ashes overnight.
Just three days later, and after much tireless effort from staff, a temporary facility had been equipped with new offices and warehouse space, power had been restored and the IT infrastructure had been rebuilt.
Steve says: “Everyone worked very hard to make sure that the business could continue. We even had some form of IT service restored within about four hours of the fire.”
The decision to rebuild.
Once staff were up and running in the temporary facilities, the company began the process of designing and commissioning a replacement warehouse, which would be more than double the size of the old one.
Although completion was still some way off, the business was still serving customers. Orders were being fulfilled from the temporary site and from the Basingstoke warehouse. Rather than wait for the new warehouse to be ready, the decision was made to support these facilities immediately by rebuilding the WMS from scratch.
Steve says: “We didn’t ever contemplate that we might have to do it all over again. But we still had all the knowledge we’d built in our discussions with the Balloon team, along with the initial specification documents. So, we had lots to work with and could rebuild it from the original information.”
Optimised, digital processes boost performance and efficiency.
Once the system went live, some of the users needed a little time to get used to it. Steve explains: “Some of our staff have been with us for decades and instead of pen and paper, we were asking them to use a scanning gun and computers. It blew their minds at first, but they have accepted it all now and have realised that it’s actually making their lives easier. Everything’s there on the scanner for them and the system provides a far better performance, with fewer errors and no need to try to control sheets of paper.”
It also no longer takes several months to train new pickers. Steve says, “We can employ someone, give them a scanning gun and just ten minutes’ training and off they go.”
The system has also been designed to customise the picking according to product weight. With this weight-based picking process, the system directs the order in which products are placed onto the pallets. Steve says: “The system reorders the product picks so that heavier products are picked first and placed on the bottom and lighter products are picked afterwards. This prevents workers from loading a pallet with a case of cakes, for example, then crushing them by putting five heavy cases of drinks cans on top.”
In using the WMS, Midland Chilled Foods has been able to significantly reduce the amount it spends on paper. Steve says that it has easily eliminated thousands of pounds worth of paper. “Across the two warehouses, we were printing more than 1,200 sheets of A4 paper a day just for the orders. We’ve got that down to two small labels per order.”
The WMS has eliminated some errors that the manual system was prone to. For instance, the telesales team would sometimes receive a change to an order after it had already been printed and sent for picking. When a second printed picking list arrived, it was picked too. Steve says: “This sometimes meant that multiple picks were made for the same customer order. There was confusion about which was the correct order and having to remedy issues like this slowed us down.” Now with the WMS, only one ticket can be produced and the order remains locked to the telesales department, so that it cannot be duplicated.
Stock accuracy has improved thanks to the system. Steve says: “As the picks are made, the stock data and catchweight information is updated immediately in the WMS. We don’t have to wait for it to be entered at the end of a shift. We can actually see the live stock situation and we’re not shorting orders due to not having the right stock.”
The old stock count system that the company was using was part of the ERP. It required them to use paper and to schedule stock takes in advance. Steve describes how this “antiquated” system has been replaced with cycle counts, where staff can use their guns to quickly count products in a single rack. He adds: “It’s better as it puts the workers in control. We don’t have to stop everything to do a count and staff can quickly count some stock and it’s updated instantly in the system.” Because Midland Chilled Foods guarantees next day delivery for orders received by 4.30 p.m., it has no room for errors here, so having accurate stock levels means customers are not left disappointed.
Working with Balloon.
Steve says working with Balloon has been “fabulous”. He praises the project manager, Sam Gorton, for his incredible helpfulness and how he is always keen to demonstrate ways in which the WMS can improve the warehousing even further.
Steve has appreciated working with the project team, too. He explains: “Balloon has it down to a tee in the way they manage projects. The staff know the system inside out and can always find a solution to anything.”
He adds: “During go live, the team was present on site. We weren’t just dropped down to support – and we still had the project team on board for at least a month after we went live.”
Looking ahead.
Although the system has only been live in the two warehouses for a few months, Steve is acutely aware that the company has the opportunity to continue to develop the system as it further improves performance. He says: “One reason that Körber WMS proved to be a good system for us is that we can extend it later on. As the business expands, so can we also expand the system.”
One of the future enhancements that Midland Chilled Foods would like to introduce is automatic invoicing. Currently this is done manually, but automating this will streamline accounting processes, eliminating the manual work and speeding things up.
When the move into the larger warehouse is finally made, the company will also take the opportunity to consider more advanced picking processes. With more than double the space than it had before, optimising picking processes will be a top priority for Midland Chilled Foods as it strives to enhance efficiency.
Steve adds: “We’ll also look at incorporating advanced shipping notifications. Our larger customers use EDI for orders and it’s something that we would definitely like to use within the WMS.”
He concludes: “This will always be a growing system for us. I don’t think we’re using even ten percent of what it can do. So, we’ll always be looking at how we can improve performance reports, make the picking more effective, move things around in the warehouse and improve communications between our two depots.”