Consulting company Odyssey has automated a new warehouse for Starbor, a Russian importer and distributor of alcoholic beverages. The introduction of the new management system took about two months.
Starbor is one of the leaders in the Russian alcohol market, cooperates with leading federal and regional retail chains, delivering supplies to more than 40 cities of the country. Starbor's product range includes several thousand different types of whiskey, vermouth and wines from Europe and the New World.
Simultaneously with the move to a new class A + warehouse, Starbor moved to a higher level of automation . “We moved to a completely different warehouse. This is an A+ class warehouse complex with high-rise pallet storage racks with a capacity of 7350 cells,”, says Maxim Boronin, Logistics Director at Starbor. The distributor chose Odyssey WMS based on Microsoft Dynamics AX to replace the outdated system.
In the process of making the decision, Starbor representatives considered proposals from different suppliers. If we list the criteria in order of priority, then the first place was given to the project timeline - about 1.5 months were allotted for launch - functionality, then the implementation budget and system reliability. “In general, the capabilities of the products that we evaluated were comparable to our expectations. Odyssey's offer was more expensive, but we felt that the fault tolerance and scalability of a solution based on Microsoft Dynamics AX is much higher",” says Kirill Kozlov, IT director at Starbor. Based on the sum of all the criteria, the distributor chose Odyssey.
The project team is another factor that played in favor of Odyssey at the system selection stage, and an important condition for the success of this implementation. Kirill Kozlov explains: “During the preliminary meetings, we realized that the level of expertise and technical support of the company is quite high. I would like to note that in this respect our expectations were fully confirmed. Odyssey employees provided and continue to provide us with quite competent and prompt assistance, including remotely.”
The Odyssey WMS solution made it possible to organize operational accounting for a number of characteristics specific to alcoholic beverages, for example, by series and the range of excise stamp numbers, production batch numbers, bottling dates, container volumes, etc. The unique combination of all measurements determines the so-called lots, in the context of which the balances in the Starbor warehouse are calculated. It is noteworthy that the identification of goods can be carried out both by the lot code and by the batch barcode. The system also helped to organize work with accompanying documentation - various certificates, excise stamps, invoices - at all stages of warehouse processing.
Starbor has been using the warehouse management system for a little over a month. "Now we are going through the running-in stage”,” says Maxim Boronin. – “Of course, at first we had a hard time, there were mistakes. In the first week after the launch, there was a problem of sorting, there were complaints from customers. But this is due to the fact that the staff is not yet fully accustomed to the program and has just switched from paper media to data collection terminals.”
Starbor is now using a special corporate training program. According to Maxim Boronin, during the first week, each newly arrived specialist is assigned to a trainer, which is a WMS support specialist who knows the warehouse features and system tools well. The peculiarity of the Starbor warehouse complex is that all employees, with the exception of heavy equipment drivers, are controllers. They have equivalent duties and are equally responsible for the execution of operations, whether it is receiving, placing, moving, controlling or shipping an order.
First, the employee is "trained" in the business processes of the warehouse and in the functionality of the program itself, then they are trained to work with data collection terminals. After that, he is transferred to the care of a mentor, which is one of the old employees. The latter introduces the work of the warehouse complex in practice. After a week of training, the beginner is released into "free swimming". At the end of the first month of work, testing is carried out, during which the employee's knowledge of the main business processes of the warehouse and its performance indicators are assessed. The total number of processed order lines and product units (bottles), employee productivity per hour/day/month, order complexity - all these data are clearly presented in the Odyssey WMS solution.
Kirill Kozlov admits, that the company has not utilized all the capabilities of Odyssey WMS. “We have not yet begun the procedures for billing operations, we are not fully using warehouse optimization tools, but in the coming months we plan to solve the remaining tasks”, – he notes. At the same time, representatives of Starbor emphasize that they are completely satisfied with the work of the Odyssey team.
"The alcohol business dictates its own terms and rules of the game in terms of organizing warehouse management. The same product characteristics are much more, there are certain requirements for the accounting of excise stamps and certificates.We believe that cooperation with the consulting company Odyssey will have a positive impact on the activities of Starbor. We have many plans,
