MT Wholesale has come up with an innovative way of streamlining inventory control – it is implementing a new barcode-based, wireless IT system to track incoming goods, check current stock levels and monitor tyres being despatched from its warehouse.
Previously, under the company’s old manual system, it had been necessary to close the business and have the most experienced staff check one section of the warehouse at a time to build up a complete and accurate picture of the 180,000 tyres. It seemed the only viable solution was to move to bar coding, but IT Manager Anthony Campbell soon realised it wasn’t going to be that simple.
“Our calculations showed that while many tyres already have a barcode on the tyre label, only 65% of our stock had proper labels,” explains Anthony.
“Also, we discovered that even though the manufacturer’s code is an excellent source of data, different codes are used for the same tyre and there are inconsistencies in the types of barcode employed by different suppliers, which meant we were dependent on manufacturers for accurate and consistent data.”
To resolve these issues the company set about developing MT Wholesale Stock Manager, a ‘future proof’ wireless system that uses barcode technologies to improve efficiency and accuracy and is more flexible because it can also be utilised in other areas of warehouse management, such as the picking process and despatch.
The system incorporates mesh wireless networking architecture, wireless laptops to run the software and connect to MT Wholesale’s main data server, wireless handheld scanners and wireless headsets and microphones, all running on independent frequencies so as not to distort one another’s signals. Meanwhile, the barcode stickers contain a full description of the tyre, the order number used to purchase it, the initials of the packer, the supplier code, MT Wholesale’s system stock code and its barcode representation, and are 100% accurate.
When a stock take scan is completed the results are automatically compiled into reports which enable staff to decide whether to make adjustments or have the stock rechecked, and the scanners can be used to move items of the same stock code into the same bin and ensure that popular stock items are in the most easily accessible picking locations. All that is then required is for the bin locations to be updated on the system.
Anthony reports that MT Wholesale Stock Manager has been in place for over six months now and is proving a real success.
“We spend less time picking and packing tyres, fewer staff are required to receive and despatch goods, our stock inventory is accurate at any given time and there has been a significant improvement in the working environment,” he says.
“Implementing the system has also reduced operational costs because we can now complete a monthly warehouse stock take in one day using three scanners without any business downtime.” Phase two, which involves MT Wholesale making use of the barcodes and speech recognition for the picking and despatch processes, is now in its experimental stages.
