Charmer Industries Supports Growth with Priya WMS
LIQUOR DISTRIBUTOR REDUCES FACILITY NEEDS WHILE INCREASING SALES AND PRODUCTS

Astoria, NY—NOVEMBER 11, 1996 —Charmer Industries, one of the nation’s leading suppliers of prestigious wines and spirits, is reaping the benefits of Motek’s Priya warehouse management system. The family-owned and operated company is known for top-notch customer service which has improved with Priya warehouse software.

 Before installing Priya, Charmer operated three distribution centers (DCs) in a manual environment. The DCs had problems with inventory accuracy and tracking issues and experienced less than optimal space utilization. After installing Priya, despite record growth, Charmer downsized to two DCs.

 Charmer’s DC environment was particularly challenging because each facility simultaneously fills full pallet, case and individual bottle orders. The company used bulk floor and pallet rack locations for reserve storage, and picked pallet flow, case flow and bottle flow locations to a conveyor/sortation system. Due to space constraints, Charmer filled fixed reserve and pick locations with different SKUs in both case and eaches lots. Operators struggled with confused product locations leading to order filling errors and inventory discrepancies. Large amounts of paperwork further hampered operational flow.

 In the midst of unprecedented growth Charmer searched for solutions to its problems and came up dry because of the flexibility the operations required, until it found Motek and Priya. “When we first met with Charmer, the operators worked with fixed location slots and had to memorize what items were located in which aisles,” says David Price, Motek’s sales representative. “Installing Priya enabled them to direct put away which maximized use of space and movement.” This allows Charmer to put items where space is available. One bulk location, for instance, might hold gin one day and pallets of vodka the next, something that couldn’t be managed prior to installing Priya. As a result, stock is better rotated on a first-in, first-out (FIFO) basis today.” 

One of the features that sold Charmer on this smart warehouse software is that Priya is Windows based, written completely on a Microsoft platform. Charmer was one of the first customers in the beverage industry to begin operating with such a system. The windows platform made Priya easy to deploy and easy to train users to use. The platform requires less overhead as well. “We like the fact that Priya allows us to work without dedicated resources,” says Josip Jurkovich, IT services manager at Charmer. “We can run any application at the same time we are running Priya, which means that our maintenance costs are much lower. Priya is also more flexible than other packages we considered—making changes very easy.”

 At the same time that they implemented Priya, Charmer doubled sales and increased its product line twofold. “Charmer’s leadership understood the need to invest in technology when they planned this growth” said Ann Price, President and CEO of Motek. “We continue to see leaders in every vertical market invest in distribution technology to move forward. They know their decisions to increase volume and available SKU’s requires a commitment to infrastructure” she continued. “Aggressive growth demands aggressive technology” said Price.”

 Charmer has reaped the benefits of Priya. In addition to gaining the 30 percent improvement in space utilization that enabled it to close one DC, Charmer improved warehouse operator productivity 25 percent. Inventory management control improved dramatically. Together, the savings enabled the company to realize a payback on their investment in Priya in less than a year. Since implementation, the company has continued to grow. Priya has supported that growth seamlessly.

 ABOUT CHARMER —Family owned and operated, Astoria, NY-based Charmer Industries sells many of the world’s most prestigious brands of wines and spirits. The company is part of the Charmer Sunbelt Group, one of the nation’s leading distributors of fine wines, spirits, bottled water and other non-alcoholic products.

 

CHARMER INDUSTRIES INC. CASE STUDY
Background
Charmer Industries, one of the largest liquor distributors in the world came to Motek® with a complex warehousing/distribution problem. Full pallet, case, and even individual bottle (eaches) orders are filled simultaneously. Bulk floor and pallet rack locations are used for Reserve Storage. Pallet flow, case flow, and bottle flow locations are used for Picking to a mechanized conveyor/sortation system. Industry trends over the last few years in this highly competitive industry had forced this and other liquor distributors to handle smaller orders (including eaches), more frequently. Initially the client's three warehouses (totaling over 500,000 ft2) operated on a fixed slot basis. The introduction of new product lines, and increased sales volumes put these three warehouses at capacity. Because of space constraints, fixed reserve and pick locations could contain different SKUs and different units of measure (case and eaches). This problem was exacerbated by the seasonal nature of the liquor business, with 40% of sales occurring in the 4th Quarter.

Space utilization had become critical because of fixed slotting. Product could not be located, resulting in large amounts of chasing, shorts, and mis-ships. Large amounts of paperwork were causing delays and mistakes. Their limited dock bays and staging areas were small and highly congested, hampering receiving and put-away. Customer service levels were down and labor costs were up. Customer returns processing was using more and more labor, and causing inventory discrepancies and unnecessary product re-ordering. The client was also faced with many government mandated tracking and reporting requirements, especially in the import bond warehouse areas. They had investigated using new warehouse automation technologies to enhance its operations, but had not been able to find a system flexible enough to operate in its high SKU, high volume, mixed multiple pallet/case/eaches environment. To solve their problem,. Motek® provided a comprehensive distribution and warehouse automation solution that was flexible and powerful enough to support this very demanding distribution environment.

The Motek® Solution
Following an operations and return on investment analysis by Motek consultants, a mixed SKU random access reserve storage, coupled with a fixed slot pick to conveyor model was devised. Priya®, Motek®'s Warehouse Management System designed for Microsoft Windows®, enabled warehouse management and operators to actually "see" pallets, the items they contained, their location, and status in real-time. Using forklift, pallet jack, and handheld RF computers, Priya automated all aspects of the warehouse/distribution operation including receiving, put-away, replenishment, picking, shipping, chasing, returns, transfers, cycle count, physical Inventory, and labor productivity tracking. Paperless receiving was implemented using RF computers on the dock. RF-directed put-away ensured product delivery to the correct location, while, at the same allowing a random reserve, mixed SKU/Unit of Measure storage model to be employed. RF-directed replenishment/let-down, driven by the pick wave, allows for accurate and precise timings of let-downs in real-time. Returns, order chasing, and inter-site warehouse transfers were automated and their associated paperwork reduced. Labor productivity for all workers is automatically tracked with each transaction.

Because Priya has the same look and feel of other Microsoft Office® applications, it was readily embraced by the users and training was quick and effective.

Real-time, random access/multiple SKU/Unit Of Measure storage, coupled with computer-directed RF warehousing, allowed this client to gain an additional overall 30% space utilization, resulting in the closing of one warehouse, and the consolidation of all distribution operations into the two remaining warehouses. Operator productivity has increased by 25% while management control has dramatically improved. The resultant savings allowed for a payback of the system in less than one year. But the company's savings did not stop there. In the first year the system was implemented, growth soared as sales increased by 30% and product lines grew to 25% more SKUs. The system continues to support their growth seamlessly.