The company's distribution center to benefit from the new multi-lingual warehouse management platform
Santiago, Chile, and Markham, Ontario March 31, 2005 The Chilean conglomerate Empresas Almacenes Paris S.A. (ALMPAR), owner of one of the first South American department stores (Paris) to adopt Markham-based Headwater Technology Solutions Inc.'s Delfour WarehouseLogic third-party logistics (3PL) management software suite, has now purchased the company's Smart Enterprise 2 upgrade of the suite for its Retail Division's Santiago distribution center.
Located in Renca, a suburb of Santiago, the distribution center supplies some 25 department stores across Chile with an array of soft-and hard goods such as apparel, electronics, appliances, furniture and home décor, and personal care items. It is an ambient-temperature facility, measuring more than 360,000-square-feet, that was built in the late 1990s, according to Carolyn Marmus, logistics retail analyst at ALMPAR. WarehouseLogic has been a critical component of its technology apparatus, enabling the firm to transition from a "warehouse" to a true distribution center. It has since provided effective and stable support for all operational and growth elements of the retail enterprise.
Paris's new SmartEnterprise 2 suite includes the Enterprise Foundation, an integration layer; WarehouseLogic 2.4, the warehouse management software platform; ResourceLogic 2.4, the labor and task management platform; Active Desktop 2.4, the Web-based navigation and control interface; and the d'Amigo alert monitoring, data mining and reporting system.
Paris has used the WarehouseLogic suite since 1999 when Marmus installed the software on-site as an employee of Toronto-based Delfour (now Headwater) and subsequently remained to manage the system for the Chilean company. The SmartEnterprise 2 upgrade coincides with upgrades of the company's Oracle database and IBM AIX operating system.
Since Chile is a Spanish-speaking country, Delfour was asked to create a multi-lingual platform for WarehouseLogic screens and functions. None of the translated functions will change with the upgrade.
"We need some Spanish-language entries," Marmus said, "but most of the entries and receipts are language-neutral numbers. The programs have the ability to create receipts based on the advance shipping notices (ASNs), as well as to manage cross-dock operation and the system directed put-away process.
"We do not anticipate any changes in our internal procedures, and we expect the Java based capability to be extremely useful in structuring various system-driven tasks and labor-related activities," she added. "For example, the cartonization of product and Store Delivery Notification has proven extremely efficient for receiving product at the stores. WarehouseLogic is also managing product reservation at the point of sale and in shipping of home deliveries."
The 3PL suite has enabled Paris to achieve increases in productivity, according to company executives: in receiving, a six-fold increase; in picking, three-fold; shipping, nearly four-fold. In loading, productivity has shown an eight-fold productivity increase. At the same time, the software allowed Paris to change from static to dynamic assignment of physical space.
"We're a growing enterprise, and the SmartEnterprise 2 migration will provide us with still more flexibility and functionality to support that growth as demands on the system increase," Marmus said, noting that the SmartEnterprise 2 suite will be extended to a new furniture warehouse and to the company's Internet business in the near future.
