Haco Asia Pacific, a member of the Haco Group of companies from Switzerland, is a reputable manufacturer of roasted whole & ground coffee beans and spray-dried coffee, including formulations of premium blended coffee products and is a valued supplier for many renowned global coffee retail brands and cafes.
Challenges
Growing business volumes meant greater demands on the optimization of warehouse operations. There was an urgent need to streamline and improve the efficiency of planning and control processes in the warehouse. This starts from the receiving of orders from customers and continues to picking and packing of the orders, and finally to ensuring that accurate and complete orders are shipped to customers.
The existing conventional paper and spreadsheet-based process was incapable of providing timely and accurate warehouse operation information as they relied heavily on manual data entry and retrieval. Furthermore, the products did not have unique identification labels making locating and picking the right product a cumbersome process.
To achieve the desired productivity improvements, an inventory management system that catered to their warehousing processes was required. The solution needed to be able to optimize warehouse resources (such as space, labor, and equipment). The solution also had to be mobile enabled to allow warehouse workers to capture and retrieve product data and location from anywhere and at any time.
Solution Components
- Mobile computers or scanners – for data capture
- Desktop printer – for barcode label printing
- Mobile printer – for ad-hoc barcode label printing
- Barcode labels – for product identification
- Inventory management system web-based application – to perform back-end administrative tasks and view reports
- Inventory management system mobile application-to perform warehouse activities such as receiving, put-away, picking, packing, container loading, location transfer using a mobile device
Implementation
RES implemented the inventory management system (SmartInventory) complete with enterprise mobile devices and thermal printers. Barcode labeling and scanning was introduced to provide a complete and instantaneous overview of warehouse metrics:
- Overall space utilization – identification of items left in receiving docks or staging areas for long durations.
- Material movement – unique barcode labels (containing batch number and pallet ID) on product packaging and on pallets allowed tracking of material across various processes.
Impact
The delivered solution helped Haco Asia Pacific improve and automate the processes of:
- Inventory receiving and replenishment
- Real-time inventory tracking with FIFO capability
- Order fulfilment
- Label printing
- Packaging and shipping
- Reporting with dashboards
- Container loading management
- Warehouse bin location management
- Stock transfers
Furthermore, the SmartInventory system is designed to integrate with commonly used ERP platforms. This approach allows companies to leverage on pre-existing ERP investments while introducing greater automation execution capabilities, streamlining inventory management, and driving more efficient order fulfilment workflows.