Food/Pharmaceutical

Case Studies-> Food/Pharmaceutical

Major liquor and wine distributor: New York

A national distributor of fine wines and spirits warehouses several floors of wines by vintage and imports internationally. Most fine wines are not bar-coded and can cost over $1000 per bottle. These are maintained in lock up areas with handling restricted to specific staff. Additionally, virtual wine cellars are maintained for customers who purchase but may want aging and storage until best suited for convenience. Delivery routes are also loaded for regional fleet delivery on a daily basis and package carriers and LTL transportation is provided daily. Sales are obtained through internet orders, phone and fax.

Evaluation, solution design and implementation staff selection, was provided by Alcazar Ltd. WMS and TMS systems were specified and implemented. Integration with a legacy ERP and conversion to a replacement ERP was accomplished successfully.
Alcazar Ltd was contracted by the WMS supplier to solve customer dissatisfaction with a consultant the customer had hired. They paid the consultant but he didn’t subsequently pay the vendors involved. The trust factor was non-existent and blending together the correct team to resolve the issues in a cost-effective and timely manner was the biggest obstacle. Compounding the problem was a low-level of IT customer knowledge or comfort. Complete automation from WMS and TMS as well as Radio Frequency communication was established and the customer confidence was restored in the WMS supplier.

Sugar distribution: Indiana

Managing over 100 incoming daily car loads of incoming and out-going containers, pallets and tankers of sugar commodities was a mammoth task change in tracking systems. The effort took a combination of ERP, WMS and TMS replacement software, hardware and integrated solutions to create real-time visibility to multiple locations. Short lead times to major buyers (Kraft, Hershey, etc.) required access to minute by minute changes. Pricing and cost vary with each item on each load as commodity prices change and contracts at specific price and/or cost levels must be maintained until the contract volumes or timeframe is reached. Lots must be tracked on liquid, powdered, granulated, and colored sugars. Identical sugars must be handled differently based on number of lots allowed by each customer and source of sugar (cane, beet) and grain size are all factored. Quality control steps and certificates of compliance are required with specific loads coming in or leaving.
•	Custom (customer compliant) labeling must be managed with proper stencil/labeling.
•	Packing list as well as BOL (bill of lading) completion must by the purchase order instruction.
•	Transportation also required custom spot quotes for TL (truckload) shipments as well as rail costing maintained.
•	Means to deal with substitutions, shipments delayed by incoming rail glitches and three shifts of staff to coordinate from remote locations were implemented.
Alcazar Ltd provided evaluation, solution design in conjunction with the supplying ERP provider, as well as RFQ, selection, and payment to the WMS/TMS providers. Supplying solutions to coordinate completely new ERP/WMS/TMS integrations simultaneously was a more arduous planning and evaluation process but created more ROI than originally anticipated. Real-time automated Freight quoting created a $1.25 Million cost reduction option over 3 years.