The largest publishing house of educational literature in Russia announced the successful launch of Odyssey WMS solution at the seasonal warehouse. This was the first step towards complex automation of the logistics management system. The peak period of product distribution in the regions falls on the summer months from May to September. Before the start of the high season, it became clear that the current model of logistics processes and warehouse complex will be heavily overloaded with planned volumes of orders. However, a drastic change in the IT system could make the situation worse. Especially since the warehouse and transport logistics processes had until recently been supported entirely by a third-party partner of the publishing house. The company decided to open an additional seasonal warehouse in order to alleviate the issue of increased workload during the peak season and to implement a new management system Odyssey WMS at the same time.
The goal of the project was to get the seasonal warehouse up and running in time for the peak season. Among the requirements for the selection of the project partner Prosveshchenie management considered the flexibility of the basic settings of the warehouse solution to quickly launch and adjust the WMS to the specific processes of the Publishing House.
Odyssey consulting company was acknowledged as the best in all respects. Odyssey team offered us a solution with wide functionality adapted to the standard processes that allowed us to reduce the time for launching the warehouse. The project partner was strictly selected. In addition to the budget and implementation timeframe, we evaluated the availability of a qualified team with the relevant experience, positive feedback from other Russian customers, and the possibility for one of our customers to come to the warehouse. If the technology of the warehouse operation changes over time, the system can easily be reconfigured to meet the new needs. Thus, Prosveshchenie Publishing House will be able to constantly improve the level of logistics service and serve more customers
The management of Prosveshchenie Publishing House planned a large-scale reorganization of the main distribution warehouse. This is the starting point from which more than 7,000 items of Prosveshchenie products: textbooks, workbooks, teaching aids and other materials are sent to educational institutions and commercial customers, and eventually arrive at the students and teachers.
Thus, the quality of Prosveshchenie's warehouse operations has an impact on providing Russian schools with the educational literature they need. To ensure high productivity, we redesigned standard processes: receiving, placement, shipment planning, picking, control, shipment, inventory. In accordance with the processes, we designated warehouse areas and employee roles. In setting up the system we also redefined the units of inventory, their mandatory parameters, and specifics of placement and handling
The seasonal warehouse was organized from scratch: they designed and automated the main processes and prepared a non-standard procedure of integration with 1C system for the existing format of exchange. Prosveshcheniye and Odyssey specialists built the model of processes and WMS operation in such a way as to ensure maximum speed of order picking during the peak season. The new 8000 sq. m. warehouse uses floor storage, and the system helps to process up to 550,000 copies (25,000 reams) of products daily. At the same time, warehouse employees were trained on the system and data collection terminals (DCTs). With Odyssey's participation, the company developed detailed instruction manuals for different user groups, primarily for operators.
Thanks to the training materials and mentoring system, the seasonal warehouse employees mastered Odyssey WMS in a short period of time. New employees of the complex will also be able to quickly start functional tasks. Odyssey consultants have demonstrated high competence and flexible approach to the implementation even under tight deadlines. All the tasks, including the requests for improvement of the LDS system, were performed very quickly. The partner's team helped to train the personnel and provided efficient technical support, and worked side by side with the employees at the automated warehouse", - comments Andrey Krivosheev, system architect of the Prosveshchenie Publishing House
The seasonal warehouse is now running basic processes that take into account floor storage and stack storage. A number of methodologies for the central warehouse are still being developed. Final results of the Prosveshchenie Publishing House warehouse automation will sum up after the end of the season. As a result of implementation, the audit of the warehouse was conducted by experts in the field of logistics, among them were representatives of the German company Sigloch - a leading German logistics company in the bookselling industry. Representatives of the company highly evaluated the processes and automation system of Prosveshchenie Publishing House. We were very impressed by the speed of software implementation and the complex but stable technical processes Christoph Schaupp, Managing Partner of SiglochGroup We have gained invaluable experience in the implementation of warehouse tasks under "combat" conditions. Successful implementation of OdysseyWMS in a seasonal warehouse on a hot schedule only confirmed our determination to reorganize our logistics management system. The next step is to move OdysseyWMS to the main warehouse of the Publishing House
