Foschini plans to roll out the solution across the remaining DCs, also in Cape Town, in the coming months, which comprise another 17 000m² of warehousing space. Collectively, the four warehouses serve 14 trading divisions and 1500 stores across South Africa's nine provinces as well as neighbouring countries Namibia, Botswana and Swaziland.
The legacy system had been struggling to support business processes such as postponement, cross-docking, part order allocation and part order delivery, with upgrades taking as long as six months to implement. Foschini embarked on a complete supply chain improvement programme following a period of sustained growth. The WMS solution was selected to form the foundation of their revamped supply chain.
“The warehouse management solution was delivered on time and under budget, thanks to the commitment and expertise of the two companies,” explained Jan Tukker, group logistics director, Foschini. “We reduced volumes for the switch-over to the new system in case we needed to iron out any problems but there weren't any and within five days we were shipping greater volumes of goods than before.”
“Foschini saw an opportunity to get a step ahead of its competitors by making dramatic improvements to its supply chain processes,” commented Steve Smith, senior vice president, EMEA, at Manhattan Associates. “This retail pioneer has added to our success in the region, based on our strong local partnership and a system that has a proven track record.” The company is a global supply chain optimisation provider to more than 1200 customers worldwide that consider supply chain optimisation core to their strategic market leadership.
