ant Technologies Complete Automation of Russian Logistic Service’s 90,000-m2 Warehouse Premises

ant Technologies, a leader in the Russian market for IT logistics solutions, announced today the successful completion of a large-scale project to completely automate a chain of warehouses operated by Russian Logistic Service, Russia’s largest logistics operator, based on the Logistic Vision Suite warehouse management system.

Headquartered in Moscow, Russia, Russian Logistic Service (RLS), a Russian closed joint stock company, has branch offices in 20 Russian and Kazakh cities and towns and offers the full range of logistics services in Russia, including truck, railway, air and sea carriage, consolidated shipments, as well as cargo storage and handling at RLS’s 11 warehouses across Russia.

During 2007-2008, RLS put into operation five new warehouses offering the complete range of cargo storage, handling and transportation services. To ensure that its services completely meet today’s customer demands in various market segments, RLS contracted ant Technologies, a company that has a unique experience and expertise in warehouse automation based on Logistic Vision Suite.

RLS made its choice due to the following advantages of Logistic Vision Suite: comprehensive functionality (in line with today’s logistics market demands), flexibility in adapting to the various customer needs, expandability through the subsequent deployment of additional Logistic Vision Suite modules, short deployment period, and scalability at minimum costs. As part of the project, ant Technologies has deployed Logistic Vision Suite at all of RLS’s new warehouses in Khabarovsk (10,000 m²), Samara (10,000 m²⁾, Podolsk (35,000 m²), St. Petersburg (15,500 m²) and Yekaterinburg (20,000 m²). In so doing, the company has performed the various tasks contracted to it by RLS, including the ability to implement system settings to handle a variety of business processes, cost minimization, assessment completeness, billing reliability, accuracy and control of meeting the applicable specifications and customer requirements (for example, various order selection algorithms for various regions have been developed and logistics delivery terms calculated for some of RLS’s customers), and management reporting centralization. Moreover, ant Technologies has met the 3PL industry specific requirements for quick individual settings for every warehouse customer. By using a specially developed deployment methodology, the company managed to launch goods handling for each new customer within one to ten days following the service contract date. In order to optimize the costs of ownership of the WMS for all of RLS’s warehouses, ant Technologies has developed a system replication policy specially for RLS.

ant Technologies has installed Warehouse Vision, the central component of Logistic Vision Suite, at all of the warehouses. The functionality of the standard solution has been expanded by adding some supplementary modules such as a billing system, an order shipment scheduler and a module designed for setting up the integration with external ERP customer systems to effectively arrange for electronic document circulation processes. The management modules deployed, including a visual warehouse manager and a visual resource supervisor, allow monitoring warehouse operations on a real-time basis. Logistic Intelligence, a review and reporting system, has been deployed at RLS’s headquarters in Moscow to centralize management reporting tasks.

User licenses have been set up on 250 workstations. The five warehouse complexes have been equipped with 36 wireless access points underlying wireless networks, 22 Zebra label printers and 174 Motorola (Symbol) data collection terminals. ant Technologies will also offer support services for Logistic Vision Suite.

Field trainings to deal with the new WMS system have been hold for RLS’s administrative and warehouse staff at the premises of the ant Technologies Training and Consulting Center.

At present, the warehouses operated by RLS successfully handle a wide range of goods, from consumer electronics to perfumery to foodstuff, manufactured and supplied by a variety of companies, including Auchan, Gallina Blanca, Lebedyansky, Johnson & Johnson, Kraft Foods, Yamaha, etc. Commenting on the first results of the project to deploy Logistic Vision Suite at his company’s premises, Michael Smirnov, IT Director at RLS, said, “Logistic Vision Suite allows us to choose who we want to serve rather than looking for a customer who we wouldn’t be able to serve.”