October 2022 | Beverage Industry
In the 1952 “I Love Lucy” episode “Job Switching,” popularly known as the Chocolate Factory episode, Lucy and Ethel try to prove to their husbands that a job outside of home is easier than housework, so the couples “switch.” As the guys stay at home and end up burning clothes and dinner, Lucy and Ethel, while working at a chocolate manufacturing facility, end up stuffing their faces and clothes with chocolates in order to keep pace with the conveyor belt.
In today’s real world beverage operations, where warehouses are facing issues of keeping pace with distribution, experts note that integrating warehouse software solutions can improve efficiencies.
“With customers needing products faster than ever, larger beverage wholesalers need to find ways to get more products out the door on time,” says John Rosenberger, director of iWAREHOUSE GATEWAY and global telematics at The Raymond Corp., Greene, N.Y. “Because of this, many wholesalers are looking to make changes but ones that have a lesser impact on infrastructure and cost.”
As warehouse management or location systems can be integrated onto equipment or in the warehouse with minimal changes, Rosenberger notes that such software solutions can offer insights that can help save money and boost efficiencies in the future.
Ken Ramoutar, chief marketing officer at Lucas Systems, Wexford, Pa., notes that with more beverage distributors turning to consolidation for efficiency purposes, flexible software solutions become crucial. “There has been a strong trend of creating ‘mega distributors’ especially in the beer, wine and spirits sectors of the beverage industry,” he explains. “Much of the consolidation has been through the acquisition of many small distributors aggregating them into a larger entity for the purposes of scale and efficiency. With that business strategy comes the IT challenge of integrating or switching acquired companies on to a unified set of systems to manage ordering, inventory, warehousing operations, logistics and billing, for example.
“What becomes critical in choosing warehousing software is the capability to easily integrate and work with multiple back-end systems at the same time,” he continues. “In many cases, it takes years for an IT consolidation strategy to fully play out. Software that is easy and agile enough to receive and pass data back and forth to multiple WMS, ERP, TMS or WES systems, without a lot of IT resources that can be implemented within a relatively short window, becomes a critical factor in choosing warehouse software.”
Kyle Nevenhoven, principal consultant at Dematic, Atlanta, notes that with consolidation, comes the need for more complex WES and WCS solutions.
“Consolidation is impacting the scale of warehouses, which require more complex WES and WCS software packages, as well as automation in some cases as the traditional lightweight WMS models do not scale to these large operations,” he explains. “Consolidation also increases the need to have visibility across a more complex ecosystem, linking intelligence from multiple facilities to have visibility to inventory, capacity and productivity.”
An SKU evolution
Along with companies across the industry continuing to expand in locations and the number of suppliers, comes the challenge of handling higher SKU counts, experts note.
Dave Williams, vice president of technology solutions at York, Pa.-based Westfalia, notes that with greater SKU proliferation, the rules and complexities of dealing with those individual SKUs present challenges from an order fulfillment standpoint.
“When dealing with a small number of SKUs (a couple hundred) it’s easier to manage inventory and fulfillment,” Williams says. “Particularly in the beverage industry, as warehouses start seeing thousands of SKUs not only due to variety but how each item is packaged, beverage manufacturers and distributors need detailed visibility of their inventory.
“With higher proliferation comes a tremendous amount of information and rules, each helping to distinguish products from one another. Even time-sensitive packaging or promotions have to be considered and tracked for timely fulfillment,” he continues. “It’s not only the complexity of handling a higher volume of SKUs, it is how a company wants to utilize those SKUs to fulfill orders and drive sales.”
Paul Laman, vice president of beverage at DMW&H, Fairfield, N.J., echoes similar sentiments, noting that with greater volume and more SKUs in a facility, utilizing the best of breed software will allow a distributor to better handle these increases in demand and complexity.
“With an increase in SKUs, the warehouse storage density decreases, which emphasizes the need for optimal use of the storage systems,” he adds. “The software needs to manage the storage rules well to preserve the best space utilization possible.”
Lucas’ Ramoutar suggests that software solutions should have the flexibility to adapt to an ongoing evolution of SKU changes and velocities.
“The largest impact is on the warehouse floor, where pickers and selectors have to fulfill a larger variety of SKUs creating more physical work per day, and a greater chance for errors,” he says. “Software that helps beverage wholesalers efficiently manage the actual work done on the floor and keeps labor costs down, becomes a critical part of the fulfillment operation.”
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