J&B COLD STORAGE SELECTS PRIYA WINDOWS-BASED WMS
Real-time information drives customer service and aids in business expansion.

BEVERLY HILLS, CA – January 22, 2006 - J&B Cold Storage, a public cold storage facility providing refrigerated warehouse space to food wholesalers, processors, manufacturers, distributors and brokers, has announced its selection of Motek’s Windows-based Priya® Warehouse Management System (WMS) to fully automate its Cold Storage facility in St. Michael, Minn.   The company selected Priya due to its comprehensive functionality, flexibility, and price.

Part of the J&B Group, J&B Cold Storage sought to replace a legacy paper-based system it had used for 13 years in preparation for significant business growth.   The facility using Priya provides cold storage for both the company’s meat packing business as well as customers using J&B Cold Storage’s third party logistics (3PL) services.  Often customers bring product to the warehouse with little notice, and using only a locator system, J&B Cold Storage found it challenging to track and manage inventory and accurately invoice customers for storage, packaging and distribution.  “We wanted to improve customer services and utilize our WMS system as a tool to minimize customer phone inquiries and allow them to access information via the web.  This required an RF-based system that would provide real-time information,” said Bill Dettmann, Director of Information Technology for J&B Group.

In addition to J&B Cold Storage, J&B Group produces and markets products under the No Name Steaks/Midwest Pride® labels, and portion cut steaks for restaurants/institutional markets under the Midwest Pride® label or the customer's own private label.  Since these products are stored in the same warehouse used for cold storage customers, it was essential that the WMS integrated seamlessly with the existing wholesale distribution software system.  Priya’s open architecture, which allows the application to interface with a number of enterprise resource planning (ERP)  systems, transportation management systems, and other supply chain applications, filled this need.  “With Priya, we can route the cold storage 3PL orders along with the wholesale distribution orders, and coordinate the allocation of warehouse slots between the 3PL and our wholesale warehouse distribution systems,” Dettmann added.

“J&B Cold Storage required an RF WMS system that improved accuracy by tracing products by customer, product code, assigned lot number and location, increased speed, and provided real-time information to both the company and its customers – a comprehensive system,” said Frank Testani, Sales Consultant for Motek.   “Only Priya offers complete functionality built-in from the start.  Increasingly, customers like J&B Cold Storage are turning to Priya because it is an all-inclusive product with no fees for additional modules or features.”

Priya’s overall performance and functionality, Microsoft platform, and proven voice-directed picking, a feature being considered for future use at J&B, were key factors in J&B Cold Storage’s decision to standardize on Priya.  “Not only does Priya include every feature you would expect in a high-end WMS at a lower price, but it includes the additional features and functions like integrated labor standards that are critical to our operations.  Unlike competing systems, these features are included at no additional cost, cutting nearly $175,000 off our overall price.”

An additional important feature for J&B Cold Storage was Priya’s unique ability to quickly and seamlessly add to an order up to the minute a truck left the warehouse as a competitive advantage.  This feature not only ensures that trucks roll with full loads, but that customers receive their orders as quickly as possible, without requiring J&B Cold Storage to back out the original order and create a new invoice. 

Unique among competing systems, the Priya WMS is a flexible, user-configurable product that supports diverse operations without changes to the software code, allowing J&B Cold Storage to create customized reports and deliver real-time information via a website to its customers.  This flexibility enables Priya to conform to J&B Cold Storage’s business model and processes, giving the company the freedom to proactively run its business, control inventory and monitor the productivity of its employees, all cited as critical factors for growth.

 About J&B Group

 

J&B Group is a leading, privately held perishable food manufacturer and distributor serving the retail and foodservice industries. Collectively, J&B’s business units total approximately $400 million-plus in annual sales revenue.   Established in 1979, the company is based in St. Michael, Minn.  J&B offers customers a variety of products and services including 3PL from a 2-million-cubic-foot public cold storage warehouse for refrigerated and frozen food; food distribution from a 125,000-square-foot radio frequency-controlled warehouse for distribution to 11 Midwestern states; meat production; transportation, and foodservice distribution for restaurants throughout its service area.

About Motek^®  

Founded in 1991, Motek is the warehouse management software technology leader. Motek's single, all-inclusive product, Priya, is the only Tier 1 Microsoft Windows^®-based WMS available today. Motek's reputation for innovation began when the Smithsonian Institute recognized it for being the first RF WMS on a PC. Since then, Motek has been the first WMS on Windows, the first WMS with real-time engineered labor standards, and the first Windows^®-based WMS with voice recognition.

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