Americold is the largest temperature-controlled warehousing and distribution services provider in the world, with over 150 locations worldwide. The logistics and fulfillment giant is continually innovating to meet the changing goals of its customers, making it critical to have the right supply chain platform.
Histoire de réussite
Americold
Warehouse Management, Warehouse Labor Management
Americold drives innovation in cold-chain
L'entreprise
Le défi commercial
Americold’s legacy warehouse management and labor management systems did not have the flexibility to quickly adapt to their fast-evolving marketplace. Americold needed greater productivity and efficiency from their logistics personnel to support increasing customer demand. The goal to drive cold-chain industry innovation as the hub between food manufacturers and retailers required advanced capabilities and efficiencies not available from their legacy solutions.
La solution
To support their innovation and efficiency goals, Americold deployed Blue Yonder’s warehouse management and warehouse labor management solutions.
“Investment in innovation gives us the ability to adapt to the changing marketplace and our customers’ ever-changing needs. Operating more efficiently is core to our mission of being a global provider through innovation, experience and people, goals that can only be achieved if the right technology is in place.”
–President and CEO
Supporting evolving customer needs
To address evolving customer requirements and develop new and innovative supply chain solutions, including crossdocking capabilities and other value-add products and services specifically designed to complement traditional temperature-controlled supply chain activities, Americold needed to upgrade from its legacy warehouse and labor management solutions.
With Blue Yonder, Americold has modernized its legacy warehouse environment through real-time visibility into delivery, labor management and operations to satisfy escalating customer expectations, save valuable resources and reduce overhead. The ability to optimize any order configuration from full pallets to mixed cases to eaches has enabled a highly flexible and responsive supply chain.
Greater workforce efficiency
Blue Yonder’s warehouse labor management capabilities have supported the implementation and monitoring of workforce incentives to promote associate productivity. Baseline metrics and KPIs provide the measuring stick to calibrate and reward performance, resulting in up to a 5 percent improvement in productivity. The system also enables more accurate forecasting for workforce planning by providing trends based on the latest labor standards. Americold is predicting the potential for up to 10 percent savings in labor costs when the warehouse labor management capabilities are implemented in certain locations.
Avantages de la solution
Reduced labor costs by 5% - 10% through more effective labor standards, monitoring and incentives. Offering flexible, more advanced warehouse management capabilities to support evolving marketplace requirements increased Americold profitability and customer loyalty. Reinvested savings from optimized warehouse operations into ongoing cold-chain innovation. Received national recognition for supply change transformation.
L'expertise de Blue Yonder
To promote operational excellence, Americold has deployed the Blue Yonder solutions across a growing number of sites throughout its global network of temperature controlled warehouse operations. The implementations have supported the enablement of efficiency tools including voice-picking technologies, enhanced case- and each-pick functionalities, task interleaving, visibility and reporting. The solutions integrate with Americold’s supply chain control portal, providing greater transparency into inventory and enhanced order management capabilities for Americold’s customers.
“We primarily use Blue Yonder’s labor management capabilities to operate in some of our more complex warehouse environments. With these tools we can set more effective standards for our labor force and create better processes that are more efficient.”
–EVP of Business Development and Supply Chain Solutions
