FDBusiness.com

Supply chain IT company BalloonOne is reducing sales margin shrinkage for fresh food distributors by making it easier to keep an accurate track of products that are sold by unit.

Using a catch-weight feature of its Accellos warehouse management system (WMS), fresh goods are received quickly by simply scanning in barcodes of individual units to capture encoded information with the overall weight of the consignment. BalloonOne says that this is the best way to improve accuracy and maximise margins and profitability.

The system provides a clear and accurate picture of the goods received as well as the stock levels in the warehouse and the number of units sold. As units are despatched, the individual weights are subtracted from the overall weight, which also compensates for weight loss due to evaporation.

The efficiency gains are significant as the barcode label is scanned once only, with the product codes, quantities, weights, expiry date, and batch numbers interpreted automatically by the system. This also provides a robust traceability solution so that any and all items can be identified quickly back to their source without the need to search through paper records.

“Fresh food distribution generally is a high throughput operation. A lot of product comes in and goes out of a warehouse in a short space of time and so accuracy is paramount. Companies need to know what they have received and what they have despatched once sold. Sales are based on weight and so margins are often difficult to work out until all units have been sold,” says Craig Powell, managing director, BalloonOne.

“With Accellos food distributors can see precise numbers of units across all product lines, whether they are in stock or have been sold. This also eliminates situations where a company may have stock remaining on the system but nothing is actually left in the warehouse,” he adds.

BalloonOne’s WMS interfaces easily with existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and order management systems – such as SAP Business One and NetSuite, sharing the same database and eliminating the need for data duplication. The WMS has been developed for maximum flexibility to meet these different, individual requirements and is, therefore, very adaptable and scalable.