Doboy Cold Stores provides 3PL warehousing and logistics including freezer, chilled, cool and ambient temperature stores. They have two cold storage facilities equipped with the latest technology where all product movements are fully scanned with RF technology.
Doboy also provides a range of value adding services including blast freezing, static freezing, picking and packing, pallet wrapping and inventory management. Doboy is export, Safe Food certified and Halal certified, in addition to being a quarantine inspection facilities and also prepare export health certificates.
Part of the supply chain for beef and other food products is tracking from paddock to plate. This makes tracking each individual carton as it passes through Doboy’s warehousing facilities of paramount importance. With food production, typically each carton is uniquely bar coded tracking both its production source credentials and market eligibility.
The Opportunity
Doboy is a long-time user of Infoware’s warehousing and accounting services since 1994.
While RF scanning tracks all carton movements, and customers have web visibility of stock levels and transactions, inefficiencies remained within the supply chain. Customers or production facilities typically scan cartons onto pallets to flag it has left their site. Doboy then repeats the process by scanning each of those same cartons on the same pallets, upon arrival at their site.
Subsequently, customers will provide ‘releases’ for product to be picked and dispatched from the warehouse. This effort is also replicated as the data is then re-keyed into Infoware by Doboy admin staff.
The Infoware Solution
In review with Michael Hodge, Head of Business Services, the implementation of EDI data transfers would result in a considerable cost of labour saving, by removing the need to scan every carton arriving at Doboy, provided the customers carton scan data could be received electronically in a timely manner. Michael reviewed this with some of their customers to see if they could supply the scan data, to great success. This proved to create a major competitive advantage in the removal of tally scan charges for the same product being scanned a second time on arrival at Doboy, in addition to drastically reducing turnaround times in the processing of inbound products.
We then reviewed the ‘technical’ challenges involved to automate the process of receiving the goods and data. One item of concern identified, was the handling of new products being received. Part of the solution is to also receive all product data before the load data so new products or changes to existing product configuration occur automatically in Infoware. This further streamlines the arrival process as warehouse staff are not waiting on admin to setup and configure new products received.
As the jobs are automatically created and waiting for the stock to arrive without user involvement from Doboy admin staff, the risk of errors resulting from incorrect data entry are eliminated.
Workflow
Stock Receipts
Cartons scanned onto Pallet at Production Facility.
As part of the production process, each carton is issued a unique bar code; each pallet is also issued a unique bar code.
Production facility staff scan the cartons, assigning to a pallet, collecting all of the carton detail. Pallets are then loaded/scanned onto a truck and shipped to Doboy.
While it is preferred to have one product on a pallet (for despatch picking efficiencies of bulk quantities), multiple products are accepted on a pallet.
Customer sends detail of load (pallets and cartons) by EDI to Doboy.
Additionally, all product profiles on the load are sent by EDI. This means that any new products are created and any existing product configurations that have changed (bar code definition; max no. cartons per pallet) are updated in Infoware automatically.
Consequently, as Doboy are waiting for the load to arrive, any internal administration required has been removed by EDI automation.
Product Arrives at Doboys
With the above pallet received as an example, without the EDI data Doboys would need to scan each of the 30 cartons individually.
As data has been be preloaded from EDI, Doboys prints their own pallet identifier label (as needs to be unique) and scans the shipping pallet label and the product is then placed in a chiller or freezer. Not only does this save labour (cost) it also allows the product to be placed into the cold store much more efficiently on receipt.
Once the load is fully received, confirmation is automatically sent to the customer, validating pallets received (customer’s pallet number and Doboys pallet number with all of the carton data).
Stock Despatches from Doboys
Stock Out Orders are now also sent electronically to Doboy, fast-tracking administration to start picking stock despatches. For each order line the product code; weight/cartons and production date range required are provided.
On Completion of scanning the pallet or cartons off pallets; the customer is sent all stock out load data including carton bar code strings.
“EDI has provided a sensible efficiency in scanning cartons once, with data shared between Doboy and its logistics partners. For Doboy, customers who can supply data via EDI have removed not only the cost of tally scanning and administration, making Doboys more cost efficient than other providers, but adds value to the site’s logistics and administration quality and efficiency.
Infoware’s innovative systems have been at the core of Doboy’s evolution in the 3PL realm. By providing outstanding services and customer support, from concept to implementation and operation, Infoware’s value to Doboy simply cannot be overstated.”
Other EDI projects Infoware has implemented recently include:
- Integration to a partner POD sign on glass application (send delivery data as manifest generated in Infoware; receive POD in real time when product is delivered and then becomes available in Infoware).
- Receive customer orders by sent in various CSV, tab delimited or XML and create in Infoware.
- Create debtors automatically once approved in Creditor Watch
- Create customer orders from different PDF invoices/orders
- Create connotes from other transport agents from EDI data
- Update prices in inventory from new supplier price lists.
Is there opportunity to fast track processing using EDI in your business?
