WMS Optimises AGRO Merchants Chill Warehousing Operations

Warehouse Management Software WMS:  Chill, Ambient & Frozen Storage and Distribution

AGRO Merchants Group sites at Lough Egish & Castleblayney Optimised with In-DEX WMS Warehouse Management Software
 

The former Castlecool Ltd. sites at Castleblayney & Lough Egish were acquired by AGRO Merchants Group in 2013 when the latter was founded. Along with its financial partner, Oaktree Capital Management, AGRO Merchants Group currently owns and operates over 7.5  million cubic meters of temperature-controlled warehouse and distribution space in the US, UK, Austria, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Australia, Brazil, Chile and the Netherlands.

The 180,000 square feet Lough Egish facility has 21,000 pallet locations making it the largest warehouse within AGRO Merchants Group – Ireland. The facility has 8 segregated chambers and caters for chilled, ambient and frozen products. The cold store also has 5 blast freezers and can freeze up to 150 tonnes per cycle. It is the first, and only third party provider, in Ireland to offer flexible packaging lines approved by DAFM [Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine]. The 65,000 square feet Castleblaney site has 9,200 pallet locations. The facility has 3 segregated chambers and three blast freezers with a capacity of 100 tonnes per cycle.
 

3PL Logistics – The Company

• Third Party Logistics 3PL Cold Storage
• Cold Storage, Frozen Storage, Cross-docking, Order Picking, Blast Freezing & Tempering
• Commodities handled: Meat, Seafood, Dairy, Consumer Packaged Goods, Bakery
• Halal approved

3PL Cold Storage Facilities – The Challenge

AGRO Merchants Group Lough Egish and AGRO Merchants Group Castleblayney offer traditional 3PL cold storage facilities and also provide many value added services to their clients. For example: blast freezing, tempering, QC control (micro-testing lab on site), Order/case picking, cross-docking, packaging of bulk imported product for retail ready packaging, able to weigh & pack; meat, poultry, snacks, seafood, fries, breaded products etc.

They required one system that could manage and control all of these value added services while providing compete traceability, live stock visibility and produce KPI reporting. This was both a demand of their clients and also a requirement for the many site certifications that they hold. These include BRC, DAFM approval for food packaging, Halal and similar. The system also needed to calculate the various handling and storage associated with the value added services, up to and including invoicing.

Warehouse Management Software – In-DEX WMS

The In-DEX WMS Warehouse Management Software from Principal Logistics Technologies had been in use on the Castleblaney site since the business was founded in 1994 by Paul Shortt. It was later deployed to Lough Egish when this site was purchased by Mr. Shortt in 2006. Soon after these sites were acquired by AGRO Merchants Group in 2013 it was intended to replace In-DEX WMS with the in-house global Agro Merchants Warehouse Management System. However, it soon became apparent that complexities, and how these were being managed by In-DEX WMS, could not be matched.

 
Some key considerations were:

• In-DEX WMS’s ability to manage in real-time, the many and varied value added services and to provide complete forwards and backwards traceability.
• Business rules management which are automatically implemented by In-DEX WMS both at client and consignee level for example by not mixing sell by dates in a consignment even when there is no health or safety implication etc.
• Racking management the sites utilise a mix of drive-in, static racking, and mobile racking. Both in the put away of goods and the picking to customer order, In-DEX WMS calculates the optimal order and routing of the fork lift trucks. Each truck is equipped with a portable computer and the operator is guided by on-screen picking instructions. Even when a number of forklifts are working in the same warehouse the most efficient coordination of their movements is worked out automatically by the system.
• Mobile racking to minimise the movement (open and closing of racks) In-DEX WMS can, on a customer by customer level, where agreed with customers, break the traditional rotation of stock by best before date (BBD) sequence and let operatives pick from open racks as long as there is no similar stock coming with “X” of its BBD – in other words continue to pick from open racks.
• Dual cycling/forklift backhauling enabling operators on, for example, goods in to locate items at the put away location due for extraction, to minimise travel with the forks empty.
• Dynamic application of stock to pickers when they arrive at a pick face to provide batch and BBD date traceability through pick faces.

 
 
Results Summary

• All Value Added Services are Controlled & Tracked with In-DEX
• Interfaces Between In-DEX WMS and Multiple Customer ERP Systems
• System Directed Picking & Put-away
• 100% Adherence to Client Specific Handling & Storage Rules
• Best Before Date & Batch Number Traceability Through Pick Faces
• Serial Item Tracking of Variable Weighted Items

“We are delighted that AGRO Merchants Group continues to be a Principal Logistics Technologies client and that we can continue to work together to deliver solutions to their customers. The recent acquisition of another one of our customers, Grocontinental , with 197,000 pallet spaces and 5,000 pallet movements per day, by AGRO Merchants Group will further enhance this relationship.”
Joe O’Shea. Principal Logistics Technologies