Leading businesses stay relevant through incremental improvement in their processes. This century-old Consumer Electronics company had a knack for evolving with the market. In their recent transformation stride, this fortune-500 company planned to streamline their end-to-end product and inventory handling process at their warehouses to address the inefficiencies. They partnered with Polestar to roll-out a Warehouse Management System for their country-wide warehouses.
The company operated through 23 warehouses in India. They had an extensive network of distribution and retail partnership for their products across segments: laptops, desktop hard drives, televisions, tablets and more.
Each product had a unique designated serial number, but the system to record the serial numbers against these products was missing. Due to this, it was difficult to assign any transaction detail against an item.
It was creating a visibility & traceability issue of the inventory as well as the sold products. There were cases of record manipulation and in-transit pilferage incidents of goods. In some cases, their customers and retailers were returning fraudulent products – hurting the business further.
Since a large number of transactions were happening at the warehouses, they had to manually record each transaction in a different excel which increased the management overhead still they could not streamline the process.
That was when they approached Polestar to develop a smart warehouse management system.
We didn't just help them implement a solution but, we also collaborated with them to create a solution outline that would suit their daily transactions.
Warehouse Management System (WMS) was a web application and was remotely accessible and the features integrated into the system addressed both the technical as well as functional requirements of the users.
Functional Aspects: It was crucial to know exactly where a specific item of inventory was within the supply chain to address the pilferage and fraudulent return incidents.
We developed multiple layers of tracking mechanism to enable the same. Our team designed the system on top of the existing ERP.
The ERP integration gave the system access to existing records like invoices, Sales order, Purchase order, stock transfer order, returns, bin movement, returnable gate pass and non-returnable gate pass. Now, they can handle each of these through the WMS. The system would automatically tag each of these documents against an item in the ERP.
With the system in place, the complete life history corresponding to a serial number could be tracked on click of a button. It removed the hassles of going through multiple excels as the WMS was controlling every transaction.
The system enabled the process managers at each warehouse to track, trace and account for each piece of inventory in real-time as it moved through the supply chain
Technical Aspects: Some warehouses were in remote locations, where internet connectivity was not stable. To address it, the WMS was made remotely accessible. To avoid any disruption in business operations due to the unstable internet, a local database was set up. As a backup, the local database was storing the data. Once the stable connection was set up, the system used to synchronise the ERP.
The WMS system was developed in a record time of 10 weeks and Piloted in the Delhi warehouse of the client. After a successful Pilot of the Delhi warehouse, the Polestar team rolled out the WMS system to as many as 23 warehouses across India.
The system delivered bin-wise, product-wise and serial number wise inventory visibility for the Head-office which led to reduced pilferage.
Now the product returns, repair and warranty issues could be managed with greater efficiency along with identifying any malpractices.
It also improved the productivity of personnel employed at the job and helped the client achieve the desired outcome with lesser resources.
