Frozen Assets Cold Storage debuts 3PL operation using management system from Delfour Corp.
Chicago, IL — October 4, 2004 — Thomas Smith, president of Frozen Assets Cold Storage, said his company will commence third party logistics operations in mid-October in a new 7,000,000 cubic-foot public refrigerated warehouse facility on Chicago's near-Southwest side using Delfour Corp.'s SmartEnterprise 2 3PL logistics software as its management and control system.
The 250,000 square-foot, single-level facility is located at 2635 South Western Avenue, and features an 18,000-pallet freezer, a 10,000-pallet position cooler and three -35 degree blast cells each with space for 45 pallets. It has 22 truck bays that open to a 40,000 square-foot inbound-outbound dock and, in a departure from most warehousing operations, it also has a 10-door refrigerated rail siding.
"This is very unusual for the Chicago area, but we think it is important to our future," said David Smith, vice president of operations at Frozen Assets. He explained that the company's receiving and shipping operations will be coast-to-coast and multi-modal in nature, focusing on a variety of food products including meat, poultry, seafood, bakery goods, vegetables and beverages.
"We've built the facility from the ground up to handle this diversity of products in the most efficient way possible, equipping it throughout with state-of-the-art hardware and software systems," Smith said. "In examining our various management software options, we found the Delfour SmartEnterprise 2 solution to be ideal for launching our operations quickly, managing them efficiently and providing us with the flexibility to play out our expansion plans effectively over the next several years."
Founded in March 2004, Frozen Assets Cold Storage plans to have 10 to 15 3PL logistics facilities in place within 10 years, with a growth plan that calls for a new facility to open every year. The company's SmartEnterprise 2 solution currently is hosted at Delfour Corp.'s data center in Markham, Ontario, but it intends to install the system on-site in the future, Smith said.
Meanwhile, using the hosted solution, operators communicate with the Delfour data center over high-speed data lines as effectively as if the system was on-site, and the company has avoided the immediate need for an IT department to staff and maintain the system.
The hosted solution includes multiple seats for the SmartEnterprise 2 integration platform, the WarehouseLogic 2 warehouse management system, the Active Desktop graphical user interface and control panel, alert management, the customer relationship management module, the document imaging module, the radio frequency integrated communications module, and the e-Vista web-based supply chain visibility tool that allows customers to view the status of their inventory and shipments at any time.
"We are proud to have been selected by this smart and ambitious young company to support their plans to create a major national third-party logistics enterprise," commented Thomas Couto, president of Delfour Corp.
