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Alliance Beverage

Dynamically Managing Warehouse Operations

Location

Grand Rapids, MI

Case Volume

7.2 Million CE’s annually

The Company

Alliance Beverage is a joint venture between Kent Beverage and B&B Distributing which was formed in 2013. The issue was scalability, and the inability to handle the larger volumes of the joint venture and the anticipated growth.

The Challenge

Alliance Beverage needed to bring 4 facilities under one roof, with an eye on the future for expansion opportunity. They wanted to effectively and efficiently manage the influx of new SKU’s. Also with the facility inclusion, Alliance wanted to increase pick and load rates and accuracy,
while measuring and analyzing metrics to improve overall operations. Seamless integration would be paramount.
“Prior to our joint venture, we developed a home-grown pick-to-belt system. However, it did not perform as needed when our footprint expanded, so we needed to ensure that we could easily manage the seasonality of our business without sacrificing pick rates or accuracy. Our new warehouse operations rely heavily on our RAS, WMS, and WCS systems being synchronized. eoStar’s RAS with integrated WMS works seamlessly with our new conveyor system which feeds directly back into eoStar to complete the picking process.
With eoTouch, eoStar’s IOS sales app, our salespeople create and submit orders from the field. Orders are then dispatched and processed from within eoStar, which adjusts order quantities based on inventory and stages them to be palletized. Built-in Palletization functionality lets us optimize pallets for each route. With our systems coordinated, eoStar can send partial work for our pick-to-belt crew and simultaneously deploy our pick-to-pallet team via Voice Pick. eoStar’s pick overview screen helps us monitor metrics, including pick rates per employee, short picks, out of stocks, and overall work completion percentages.
eoStar’s WMS and tablet app helps us manage additional warehouse operations. Every pallet received is recorded with the item, supplier, code date, and quantity. Each location in our warehouse is tracked so that we are always aware of the product location. Our forklifts are equipped with long-range scanners and mounted tablets to facilitate product movement in our warehouse, ensuring the accuracy of inventory and FIFO activity.”

Shannon Gary, Chief of Operations Officer for Alliance Beverage, on eoStar WMS

eoStar warehouse management software

Shannon Gary,

Chief of Operations Officer for Alliance Beverage

“After 3 months of operating with this integrated system, we saw a 39% increase in average cases picked per hour, a more than 50% reduction in warehouse breakage, significantly lower team fatigue, and improved morale overall.”

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