Milwaukee — October 10, 2005 — Barber Foods, a leader in the production of frozen chicken specialties, recently partnered with Catalyst International to implement a complete SAP Warehouse Management (WM) and data collection solution, utilizing SAPConsole, at its 60,000 square-foot distribution center in Portland, ME.
Previously, Barber Foods was storing all of its products at a third party public freezer. The company struggled with a lack of visibility into the distribution center (DC) and the disconnected environment between its DC and manufacturing site. When the opportunity presented itself for Barber Foods to bring its DC in-house, the food producer decided to fully leverage its existing SAP investment by implementing SAP WM. After a thorough vendor selection process the company selected Catalyst as its partner for this project based on its experience with SAP and overall supply chain execution market reputation.
The solution included 18 wireless-enabled transactions tailored for Barber Foods from Catalyst's library of transaction templates, facility design, and optimization services and Intermec hardware. The installation was completed in July 2005. Barber Foods said it considers this project to be successful.
Barber has already seen improved visibility into the warehouse. The company said it can locate product down to the pallet level and better control the quality of both inbound and outbound processes. It has also noticed improvements in inventory and order fill accuracy. The project will result in productivity improvements within Barber Foods distribution network.
A key factor to the success of this project was the seamless implementation, which Barber credits to the close collaboration between Barber Foods and Catalyst on all aspects of the project. "The go-live support period was almost a 'non-event.' Our associates were trained and knew what to expect, and as a result the actual implementation went more smoothly than I could have hoped," said Paula Gauthier, director of Materials for Barber Foods. "The DC was up and running so efficiently that there were no interruptions to the rest of the business."
Michael Eleftheriou, president and CEO of Catalyst, said, "We are appreciative of the opportunity to assist Barber Foods in leveraging its SAP investment and achieve its goals of increasing visibility and control within their distribution center. We look forward to partnering with Barber to support them with their continued efforts and requirements in optimizing their supply chain."
Barber Foods hopes to implement these same products and processes in another Barber facility in order to see similar improvements and make the sites more closely integrated. Barber Foods also sees this project as a building block in preparing for radio frequency identification (RFID).
Barber Foods http://www.barberfoods.com
Catalyst International http://www.catalystinternational.com
