In a dynamic market, every large retailer depends on a
well-oiled supply chain network for managing and maintaining the
high volume of inventory. As retail volumes increase, most
retailers struggle for keeping track of the millions of Stock
Keeping Units (SKUs) across different product categories. Future
Group, India’s biggest retailer and owner of numerous
successful brands, such as Pantaloons, Big Bazaar, Central and
HomeTown, was facing a similar problem.
As the volume of retail business handled by the Future Group
increased exponentially, it was facing a massive challenge in
handling a large number of SKUs, spread across many different
product categories including fashion, home, food, and furniture and
consumer durables. Understanding the critical importance of the
supply chain to the company, the firm set up India’s first
end-to-end supply chain services company, Future Supply Chains.
Over the years, the firm developed expertise in supply chain
management of consumer product categories, such as fashion, food
& FMCG, home decor and furniture, consumer durables &
electronics and general merchandise. The company has a footprint of
over 6 million square feet of warehousing space strategically
located across India. As demand grew, the company fine-tuned its
systems and designed supply chain solutions. Today, the firm is the
first organized intra-city transportation services company in India
— carrying out not only B2B deliveries but also B2C
deliveries in the form of thousands of home deliveries every day
across the country, especially for furniture and consumer
durables.
Future Supply Chains had warehouses spread across the country
with very little infrastructure. As the warehouses were manually
operated, it was getting extremely difficult for the firm to keep
track of inventory. Retail stores started reporting lost sales
because the goods could not reach the stores on time. The company
responded to this challenge by first rationalizing the number of
distribution centers and later consolidating to larger distribution
centers. However, the number of SKUs and volumes had increased
manifold, which necessitated a state-of-the-art Warehouse
Management System (WMS).
For Future Supply Chains, having an effective WMS in place was a
necessity and not a choice. “For any supply chain company,
warehouse management is at the core of supply chain
management,” states Samson Samuel, COO and CIO, Future Supply
Chains.
After evaluating a number of WMS products, the firm zeroed in on
Infor, as it believed that it was more scalable and reliable than
other products from competitors. And also because Infor had an
ecosystem of existing partners, as well as strong presence across
India in terms of manpower, offices and clients. The firm went in
for an all-out approach, which ensured that the company was able to
implement Infor SCM WM at 18 locations in a relatively short period
of just 18 months.
Boosting supply chain efficiencies
Post implementation, the benefits of having a robust WMS is
paying for the firm. Today, all 18 warehouses are working at
efficiency levels of more than 90 percent. A pull system based on
actual demand has now replaced a push system that ran on forecasted
demand. For example, previously, for categories like fashion, stock
consisting of a few pieces of apparel could not be traced, whereas
today even the last piece can be traced.
The Infor WMS has also helped the company rationalize its warehouse
structure design decisions. “The company is now able to
handle a very large number of SKUs and ensure 100 percent stock
accuracy as the stock is totally visible online. It is also
possible to do stock corrections in real time since all entries are
online,” explains Samuel.
The speed of processing too has improved. The company now
receives goods on a sampling basis. Previously, the staff used to
scan every single consignment as they were never sure of what a
vendor is sending or not sending. Even minor errors in SKUs now get
corrected online. Labor productivity and efficiency have increased
significantly — through the WMS, Future Supply Chains is now
able to measure labor productivity and keep a track of what each
person is doing or contributing.
The WMS also ensures that the company has visibility of stocks
across the distribution centers. While shrinkages have gone down,
stock replacement and refill rates have reached an efficiency level
of more than 90 percent. In addition, Future Supply Chains no
longer has to carry out lengthy and manual stock checks or do a
wall-to-wall count of what is where in the warehouses. Earlier it
had to do all these activities by stopping the business for a few
days; now it can do the stock check effectively without stopping
the business.
As a result of the WMS, today all warehouses are working at 99
percent efficiency. It has also helped in establishing a process
based model of business, which ensures minimum shrinkage, high
accuracy and guaranteed on-time distribution to the customer.