OVERVIEW

Front Line Safety provides food service, grocery stores, institutions, and other industries with all their safety program and compliance needs. With just under 60 employees, warehouse locations in California and Illinois, and over 5000 SKUs, managing the warehouses efficiently was a top priority. With an eye on expanding internationally, improving and streamlining their current processes to a more efficient model would be paramount to their growth plans.

IMPROVEMENTS IN EFFICIENCY NEEDED WITH GROWTH

As the company was growing, it became necessary to better manage the ever-expanding offerings in the warehouse. Simply locating items within the facility and keeping accurate inventory numbers was becoming cumbersome. There were inefficiencies in picking, bin locations, and overall tracking of inventory. “We knew we needed to implement a barcoding system sooner rather than later so our warehouse could keep up with our growth,” stated Lee McKay, Director of Operations for Front Line Safety.

A SIMPLE AND SEAMLESS INTEGRATION WITH THE CURRENT ERP SYSTEM

The company looked at several warehouse management solutions but was ultimately impressed with how Scanco Enterprise integrated so seamlessly with their Sage 100 ERP system. Lee stated, “The implementation was quite simple because the integration with our SAGE ERP solution is so good. We were able to go live in 30 days. The system is so easy, anyone can pick up the software in a day or two, and the software app and mobile device are so simple.”

GOALS ACHIEVED AND SO MUCH MORE

With the barcoding system in place, Front Line Safety was able to see where inefficiencies were in the warehouse and re-assign picking locations to move faster SKUs to closer locations. They are now able to track the efficiency of the operators, orders, tracking, and managing KPIs. Lee stated, “We wouldn’t be able to manage it all daily without Scanco Enterprise.”  

DASHBOARD FEATURE IS INVALUABLE

In addition to the warehouse operations improvements, Lee’s favorite feature is the Scanco Dashboard. “The dashboard feature gives our operators a quick look at stock, transfers, picks, and shipments. Having that information at a glance is invaluable and keeps everyone on track. For me, I love being able to customize the dashboard to get the information I need quickly. It also makes auditing very simple. We can see how products move from receipt to shipping and, if there is an error made along the line, it’s easy to see where it happened.”

PAYBACK ON THE SCANCO WAREHOUSE SOLUTION

Lee added, “With the company growing and plans to expand internationally, we had to make a change to our warehouse processes. Choosing Scanco Enterprise was absolutely the right decision. We’ve seen dramatic increases in efficiencies, cost savings, and growth we couldn’t have managed otherwise. We needed to make sure there was going to be a payback on the Scanco Enterprise system, and we are not disappointed.”

The most measurable payback was the company’s ability to cut down on staff in their picking department. They went from 6 pickers to 4 in one location and productivity increased. The other warehouse was able to cut their picking department in half. They can now ship 1,000 orders a day between the two sites.

Lee concluded, “We are a 30 million dollar business and we can’t be down for a day or two because of the software. Scanco’s customer service keeps us up and running. Scanco is a great solution!”