TDL Terminal

The logistics center of TDL Terminal (area 10,000 sq.m, adjacent territory 1.5 ha, modern docking and warehousing equipment) is located on the road that joins the southern route of the Northern Transport Corridor (300 km from Moscow). The logistics center provides a wide range of logistics services, including services on custody and goods flow processing for the benefit of third parties.

The logistics center of TDL Terminal is one of the business lines of the major textile holding TDL Association. TDL Association includes more than forty enterprises and companies in the Central Russia that perform the complete cycle of manufacturing and sale of textile items, as well as provide a range of related services.

Problems

Based on the needs of the companies that operate in the region and carry out their activities in direction of the southern route of the Northern Transport Corridor, TDL Terminal set serious requirements to the logistics facilities management when creating the infrastructure.

The system had to ensure high flexibility and adaptability to various requirements to work with various goods; a possibility to combine different strategies of goods flow management; as well as interaction with companies who own goods both through electronic workflow, and using the Internet. Special attention was paid to work with goods with variable characteristics and alternative units of measurement. This was caused by the necessity to provide services to enterprises of the textile industry, which is developed in the region.

Solution

ant Technologies has won the tender carried out by TDL Terminal by offering a state-of-the-art warehouse management system Warehouse Vision, being a part of Logistic Vision Suite, the supply chain management product family, for optimal solving of the tasks set.
When developing and introducing the solution, the experts from ant Technologies took into account complex topology of warehouse with various characteristics and weight loads; requirements to flexible work with various units of measurement; as well as the need for adaptable solution that would be able to support the logistics model, development of which was not completed at the moment of software selection.

The modern object-oriented architecture of Logistic Vision offers wide opportunities for adapting the basic solution to any specific business. The ability to set up an unlimited number of parameters allows for flexible change of physical distribution strategies and intra-depot procedures. These factors were decisive for TDL Terminal’s choice.

Along with the standard setup for FMCG handling, the rollout of Logistic Vision in TDL Terminal included adjustments that facilitate operations with specific textile goods. Since most goods arrive with no marking, in-checkers were equipped with mobile radio terminals and printers in order to reduce the time required to take delivery of goods of variable length. This enables them to enter the length of each fabric bolt, after which the system automatically generates and prints out a label containing the product’s bar code, numeric code, and name, as well as the bar code and digital value of the length of fabric.

After taking delivery of variable-length goods, a separate loading list is printed out for each pallet. The system not only provides information on the total inventory of a certain item in basic measurement units (running meters), but also shows the location, number of bolts, and sizes of each bolt of the product.

To computerize the selection, ant Technologies developed an algorithm that accelerates picking of variable-length goods and reduces the human factor. When accepting orders for fabric, the system automatically calculates the required number of bolts and sends an exact instruction to a store clerk specifying the location and number of bolts needed. When picking goods from the specified location, the store clerk scans the length of each bolt and thus lets the system control both the number of bolts taken and their lengths.

Results

Warehouse Vision belonging to Logistics Vision Suite product family is designed to ensure efficient warehousing management by providing the warehouse management and personnel with the powerful managerial toolset. The system takes into account requirements of the customers of TDL Terminal to processing of various goods at the warehouse by ensuring necessary productivity, accuracy of orders collection and minimizing unit processing cost. Optimized by means of mobile radio terminal and label printers, the acceptance operations not only reduce the time required for acceptance and marking the goods, but also allow to arrange the warehouse work on further operations in the most efficient manner.

According to TDL Terminal management, introduction of the state-of-the-art warehousing management system not only ensures transparency of its business processes for the management, but also immediately facilitates improvement of the logistics center attractiveness for the existing and prospective customers.

Sergey A. Fabritsiev, TDL Terminal ' CEO:

"We tried to perform selection of the future system for warehousing facilities management on a comprehensive basis, through assessing not only the capabilities of the solution offered, but also wide scope and comprehensiveness of the services offered, as well as the experience of the supplier. Important role was played by the capability of the supplier to act as our partner that not only meets our needs in management system, but also may provide services on optimization and joint working out of a number of complex solutions. Therefore we have chosen ant Technologies. The offered solution has attracted us, primarily, by its capabilities of flexible adjustment and customization taking into account needs of our customers. Moreover, we have appreciated that Logistic Vision Suite is the product family on management of different processes in the supply chain, which will allow us to develop our activities in the future without changing the management platform, while providing our customers with new modern services."