RedPrairie Solution Increases Productivity by 25%

RedPrairie’s Spanish partner Alfaland Sistemas implements RedPrairie WMS for leading paint supplier

RedPrairie Corporation, a global supply chain and retail technology provider, announced that Materis Paints Spain is increasing productivity by 25 per cent using RedPrairie’s Warehouse Management System (WMS) to optimise production and distribution of paint products. The implementation was carried out by RedPrairie’s Spanish partner Alfaland Sistemas, a division of the Alfaland Group, which is dedicated to providing automation solutions, management systems and improved control of the supply chain.

The Materis group has a turnover of €2 billion and employs 9,800 people in 33 countries. In Spain its brands include Duraval, Revetón, ALP and LCP, and the company is the third-largest supplier of decorative paints in its domestic market, despatching more than 150 orders a day to approximately 1,500 customers nationwide.

RedPrairie’s WMS solution, supported by voice and RF technology, was deployed at Materis Paints’ 6,000-square-meter warehouse near Barcelona. Results of the implementation include a 25 per cent improvement in productivity, a 68 per cent reduction in picking errors and a 36 per cent improvement in on-time deliveries. The site has a total of 13,000 product locations, with 5,000 allocated to picking.

“We needed to modernise our logistics management, as our existing ERP system had little flexibility and was completely manual with unfriendly screens,” says David Torner, supply chain director, Materis Paints Spain.

This resulted in a quality of service that did not meet the requirements of an increasingly demanding market.

“We reviewed what WMS solutions were available and began a rigorous seven-month vendor selection process,” explains Torner. “We set a list of more than 200 key criteria and established that RedPrairie’s WMS was the most appropriate, with Alfaland Sistemas as a partner to implement it.”

The new WMS is supplemented with RF data transmission technology from Honeywell/LXE that includes a Spanish language voice picking system.

“What we have achieved is a comprehensive system that has helped us to eliminate paperwork and includes tools that monitor peripheral and storage tasks, optimising our resources,” comments Jose Maria Murcia, customer service director, Materis Paints Spain. “And with voice picking technology, the operators’ tasks can now be addressed by the system, saving time and reducing cost. It also frees operators’ hands and enables them to focus on the manual task of safely picking and transporting paint cans and packages in the warehouse.”

Murcia adds, “The solution has greatly improved our customer service by sending an automatic email confirmation of order despatch, producing a packing list per pallet and providing fully secure batch traceability.”

Ease of use during implementation was another important consideration. Torner says, “Rolling out the WMS solution went very smoothly as both experienced and new employees perfectly adapted to the latest technology and new way of working. Overall we achieved a qualitative leap for the entire company in terms of productivity, control and monitoring, and customer satisfaction. Previously, any problems that occurred during activity peaks and took many days to fix can now be resolved within 24-48 hours.”

Andrew Kirkwood, senior vice president at RedPrairie, commented, “With more than 11 years’ experience implementing our WMS solutions, Alfaland, our Spanish partner, has done a great job to ensure Materis can benefit from a robust and flexible system that delivers a significant improvement in the company’s productivity.”