Dallas March 18, 2002 Mid Mountain Foods, a subsidiary of Food City and K-VA-T Food Stores, is using supply chain execution software from solution provider EXE Technologies to increase inventory accuracy, improve inventory tracking and heighten labor productivity at its warehouse and distribution operation.
Mid Mountain Foods serves as the distribution center (DC) for 86 K-VA-T supermarkets throughout the southeast Kentucky, southwest Virginia and northeast Tennessee region. K-VA-T, 44th among the nation's largest grocery chains, is number 279 among the nation's top 500 privately held companies, according to Forbes Magazine.
EXE first provided supply chain execution solutions to Mid Mountain Foods in 1997. The distribution center currently is using EXE's EXceed Fulfill software suite.
According to the solution provider, by using EXE's engineered labor standards, a component of Fulfill, Mid Mountain Foods has been able to utilize its forklift operators more efficiently. For example, Mid Mountain Foods was previously using 36 operators in one DC facility, but after evaluating their time through EXE's labor standards package, the company re-organized to use 20 operators more efficiently.
Following the same model across multiple DCs, Mid Mountain Food has improved warehouse efficiencies across its entire DC chain.
"In our business, inventory accuracy is our biggest challenge," explained Paul Widener, distribution systems manager for Mid Mountain Foods. "With EXE's product, Mid Mountain has seen a variety of improvements with improved inventory tracking as well as significant direct labor savings."
Mid Mountain is also doing voice-activated order selection, with EXE serving as the host for that technology.
