City Plumbing is a leading plumbing, heating and electrical supplier for the trade as well as the do-it-yourself market. It operates over 360 retail branches across the UK and Ireland that carry thousands of products, ranging from basic plumbing supplies to high-end bathroom accessories.
Historia de éxito
City Plumbing
Warehouse Management System
City Plumbing optimizes warehouse speed and efficiency with Blue Yonder
La compañía
El desafío empresarial
Recently, City Plumbing e-commerce order volume increased exponentially. Its legacy warehouse systems were unable to efficiently, and profitably, manage thousands of customer orders across channels, representing more than 20,000 unique products. The company needed to serve over 370 retail locations while also shipping directly to consumers — a challenge it had never faced before.
La solución
City Plumbing was already leveraging demand and fulfillment planning solutions from Blue Yonder, delivered via the cloud, to maximize its visibility and responsiveness. City Plumbing added Blue Yonder warehouse management to automate its distribution center operations, adding a new level of speed, efficiency and accuracy to master the omni-channel sales challenge. These solutions ensure City Plumbing daily operations can respond quickly to demand changes across all channels.
“City Plumbing went from 10 online orders a day to 1000 orders very quickly. Suddenly we were packing and delivering orders to consumers’ homes, not just retail locations. Our legacy systems weren’t up to the challenge. Blue Yonder warehouse management automates and optimizes all our activities, based on omni-channel demand and inventory information that’s updated every five to 10 minutes. We can work dynamically. We can report dynamically. It’s fantastic.”
–Supply Chain Development Manager
A 20% reduction in receiving time supports higher service and profits
Blue Yonder warehouse management has improved the efficiency of all our processes. It enables employees to pick multiple orders simultaneously and significantly reduces travel time in the warehouse. We actually did a time-andmotion study of our inbound shipments, and identified a 20% reduction in receiving time over our previous processes. Those kinds of efficiency improvements have a positive impact on both service and profitability.”
User-friendly, mobile capabilities maximize employee productivity
“Blue Yonder’s mobile interface is critical in making our warehouse employees happier and more productive. It’s relatable, it’s familiar, and it’s easy to use. It’s freshlooking and approachable, while the power of the Blue Yonder software is running in the background. When you’re delivering any change, the user-friendly nature of the technology makes an enormous difference. And Blue Yonder delivers that. Our employees needed only minimal training to get up and running.”
Working faster and smarter improves warehouse sustainability
“Sustainability is important to every company today. Blue Yonder warehouse management helps City
Plumbing use all its resources more efficiently, work more productively and make smarter decisions. We haven’t measured the sustainability impact, but we expect to realize environmental benefits from our warehouse transformation.”
Beneficios de la Solución
- Blue Yonder’s warehouse management solution positions City Plumbing to thrive in the fast-paced world of omni-channel selling. City Plumbing can quickly adapt to demand changes across channels, optimizing tasks and defining priorities to meet customers’ cost and service expectations.
- The warehouse management solution ingests near real-time data about customer orders and available inventory, then synchronize critical work processes to accurately match supply with demand.
- Because the warehouse management solution complements other Blue Yonder software, technology systems and apps, connectivity is optimized. This ensures an early identification, and fast communication and resolution, for any exceptions.
“Blue Yonder works really closely with us and looks at our needs as a customer. And I think that’s really important in any business. It’s not ‘Here’s the product, we’ll see you later.’ Whether it’s warehouse management, demand or fulfillment, they spend time with us and ensure we’re getting the maximum value from our investment. If there’s an issue, we don’t have to chase Blue Yonder. They’re a true partner in our success.”
–Supply Chain Development Manager
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