Time saved by automating orders

OpenWMS has enabled the company to automate order processing, which has reduced inaccuracies and time spent keying in data – saving them 30 hours a week in decreased administrative work. It has also enabled them to win new business without increasing their workforce.

In 2012 RIF Logistics consolidated its operations into one new DC in Dunstable, Bedfordshire. In 2013, the business grew by 40%.

Dominic Bacon, MD of RIF Logistics, says: “In any 3PL environment there is a process to undertake with a number of steps involved from receiving an order, to stock selection and shipping. If each of those steps needs to be completed manually it makes the process very time consuming and vulnerable to inaccuracies.

“With an automated system, you can remove a lot of those steps and streamline the whole process. Now with OpenWMS, an order is emailed in, or uploaded via a file transfer site, and the data automatically imported into the system creating a task, removing the need to re-type the information, and a pick created. This provides staff with a clear understanding of existing workloads and helps improve our labour productivity.”

Importantly for RIF Logistics, investing in an automated WMS enables them to attract new customers without the need to employ additional staff. This was key to the company’s plans for sustained growth.

“The ability to secure new customers, and process more orders without increasing head count in the office was crucial to our decision to implement an automated system. With the manual system more orders would have meant more emails needing to be printed, more picks created – more pressure on our admin team. Now, we are able to take on more customers with confidence that we can manage the extra workload and staff can focus on more value-added tasks,” adds Bacon.

As well as giving the business more scalability to facilitate growth, OpenWMS is also benefitting RIF Logistics’ existing customers. The system offers full control of customers’ stock inventory, including batch control which is of particular importance for its customers who supply own-label branded products to supermarkets, as it gives them the ability to easily recall groups of products and is often a contractual obligation.

RIF Logistics also implemented Advanced’s 3PL customer web portal, OpenWMS Portal, which allows customers to access real-time information about stock levels. They are also able to access tailored report menus and run reports on stock history online, as well as access sales orders in electronic format. 

Since implementing OpenWMS, the administrative workload at RIF Logistics has been halved, and staff are saving around four to five hours a day. The company is continuing to see sustained growth, and attract new business and has improved its e-commerce offering.

“We have seen more of our existing channels using our e-commerce service, as it is now less cumbersome and much slicker. We have also won several new customers and have seen renewed interest from companies we had previously been in contact with but who were reluctant to move forward due to the lack of an automated system. Now, customers can see that we have invested in state-of-the-art technology and are committed to offering them that higher level of service they feel confident to entrust us with handling and distributing their stock,” says Bacon.

RIF Logistics expects to further capitalise on e-commerce growth by using the system and is also due to implement a billing module as part of the WMS. The company anticipates that this will save them even more time by reducing data recording, which will be managed automatically. It will also speed up the reporting process by automatically producing statistics for the billing spreadsheet, which is currently created by a member of staff manually tallying all orders on a daily basis.

As a relatively small 3PL company, employing 16 people, RIF Logistics believes this technology is helping them to remain competitive and stay ahead of the curve.

“Automating our processes though OpenWMS has had a considerable impact on the way we work. It has improved accuracy as we have eliminated the margin for human error, and it has also speeded up the time taken from receiving an order to it reaching the shop-floor,” concludes Bacon.