Deliveries up 25% and costs down £100k

Migrating from a traditional, paper based warehouse management system to Indigo very quickly had a high impact on Evans Vanodine’s business performance and the company’s ability to scale operations.

Before using Indigo’s WMS, Evans Vanodine would receive customer orders manually, enter them into the sales system and print the associated picking notes. At this stage, stock would not have been allocated to an individual order and the associated picking note would be stored in a physical pigeon-hole according to the customer’s geographical location. As a paper based system, there was no way for stock levels to be accurately checked once an order was confirmed and picking was managed according to regional delivery priorities. 

With pickers unable to check stock availability before commencing, time would be wasted searching for stocks and roughly 20% of deliveries were shipped incomplete.

The company went for Indigo because of its excellent integration with Infor’s ERP system, real world functionality and proven track record for delivering high quality WMS solutions on time and within budget. 

Within weeks of the ‘go live’, the benefits of using technology to manage warehouse processes became very apparent, as Evans Vanodine’s Systems Director, Anthony Evans explains.

"We have over 2,000 finished good SKUs which could be located in any of the 3,500 pallet spaces in the warehouse. Now we know exactly where all stock is located and what quantity is available for sale in real time. Once a customer places an order, we know straight away whether we can fulfill all their requirements and can inform them accordingly. The system is automatically updated on a continuous basis with stock allocations, ensuring any orders in the pool do have stock available to promise, avoiding incomplete shipments and disappointed customers.”

After implementing Indigo, Evans Vanodine now consistently achieves 98% successful "on time in full first time” delivery rates. This represents a significant achievement, especially considering the large number of individual SKUs stored in the warehouse and is a large improvement on their original 80% success rate.

In addition, having an automated system ensures Evans Vanodine is better placed to cope with sudden peaks in demand for particular products, for instance, as a result of an infectious disease outbreak affecting livestock. "Having Indigo really helped during the recent swine and avian flu crises, when we had unprecedented demand for specialised disinfectants and alcohol-based hand sanitisers and needed to ship huge volumes very quickly,” says Anthony Evans.

Previously, Evans Vanodine would have relied on operatives working overtime to meet customer order requirements during periods of high demand but now, busy periods can be managed as part of its business as usual operations, across two standard shifts. The company has estimated its ability to avoid overtime labour costs and manage warehouse operations across just two shifts has saved well in excess of £100,000 over the past two years.

Data quality has also been significantly improved using Indigo and before beginning the picking process, operatives can check exactly what stock is available. This is useful because many customers place large orders comprising many different products and some may not be immediately available. "Now we can decide together with the customer whether to send the order partially complete or wait for all the items to be available. Having the ability to be so open when communicating with customers has made a big difference to overall satisfaction levels – for customers and operatives,” adds Anthony Evans.

Over the past few years, the longer term strategic benefit of its investment in WMS technology has become clear and Evans Vanodine has estimated total business levels have increased by 10%. This is in part due to its strong market reputation and also because customers have switched to Evans Vanodine as a supplier, thanks to the company’s high overall product and service quality. Currently, stock order and delivery accuracy levels are 99.7%. "We wanted to be able to differentiate ourselves with a superior customer service and have achieved that goal. Having the ability to tell customers in advance exactly what will be on their order is definitely a competitive advantage and our growth rates are a testament to this,” says Anthony Evans.

Indigo’s WMS has also enabled Evans Vanodine to implement further business improvements, by allocating each product with a unique identification number as soon as it comes off the production line. This has benefited the company in two ways. Firstly, it supports efficient stock rotation, by ensuring that products with the shortest shelf life are always prioritised for picking and shipment. Secondly, it provides Evans Vanodine with the ability to track and trace products through the supply chain and onto the end customer. "Each unique number is located within our IT network and in the event of a problem, each item can be tracked to the individual batch and corresponding customer order number. This gives us the ability to immediately confirm the origin of any stock the customer has received,” says Anthony Evans.

Stock auditing is another aspect of warehouse management that has been improved since implementing Indigo, with Evans Vanodine now able to perform ongoing perpetual inventory checks. Warehouse operatives are routinely given an aisle to check and the entire warehouse is counted 10 times a year, which eliminates the need to perform an annual ‘tools down’ stock count for auditing purposes. 

Overall, Evans Vanodine now operates a more efficient warehouse and rarely requires workers to do overtime or work weekends at premium rates. "We have managed to increase business levels and shift more stock without having to work 24 hour shifts, which was a requirement we had envisaged previously, before implementing Indigo,” says Anthony Evans.