Warehouse Customers

Oki (UK) Ltd’s plant in Scotland manufactures and distributes printers across Europe.

iQlink delivered a solution in OKI’s manufacturing plant and warehouse where hand-held terminals receive finished goods into the warehouse. The solution implemented by iQlink is used in the warehouse for bin put-away, picking, store location transfers, packaging and dispatch. The bar-code hand-held solution also caters for complex batch and serial number tracking throughout the warehouse and dispatch function. The entire system was implemented by an iQlink consultant in less than six weeks and OKI has extended the solution to another warehouse in Europe.

Warwick University’s campus is spread across 290 hectares. Its catering facility serves food and beverages to several thousand undergraduates, seminar delegates and staff every day from several stores, kitchens and outlets across the campus.

iQlink and its partner Chelford installed SAP IM and a mobile solution to handle goods receipt, goods issue, stock transfer and inventory count. The solution had two unique advantages over the alternative options. The off-line capability enables stock checking inside their many walk-in freezers where there is no RF or GPRS signal. The level of encryption provided also met Warwick’s stringent security standards which are designed to prevent very computer-literate people from hacking into the application.

Amoun Pharmaceutical in Egypt moved from a custom built system to SAP in January 2009 and simultaneously chose iQlink to mobilise their SAP system in their central and distributed warehouses, running SAP WM.

iQlink developed a multi-language application in English and Arabic which involved right to left wording and the ability to choose between English and Arabic text on the hand-held screen and bar-code label printer. iQlink has developed a multi-language capability that will be deployed at two more customers. Also developed was a configurable printing solution using the VTI server to print configurable bar-code labels from the application.

Waterstone’s is Britain’s largest book chain with over 300 retail stores. Following the implementation of a new central book hub in a warehouse that occupies over two acres, iQlink was selected to provide a number of application solutions.

At each store, an application running on Symbol hand-helds provides proof of receipt and returns updates to SAP. In the warehouse, the solution provides stock movement, picking and dispatch control. iQlink enabled the integration of VoxWare, a voice activated picking solution, to the high speed VanderLande materials handling carousel. Over twenty stores are now fully live with the new system and a rapid rollout programme adds new stores in a controlled manner. iQlink’s partner Unipart manages the outsourced central warehouse.

Operating across 40 countries, Princes is the UK’s leading importer of canned food and one of the country’s largest soft drinks manufacturers. Princes brand names include the well known Princes label, Napolina Italian foods and Shippams spreads, Aqua-Pura natural mineral water and Crisp ‘n Dry cooking oil. Princes manufactures across nine production sites in the UK, supplying own brand juices, drinks and oils to many of the country’s leading supermarkets. 

Princes was iQlink's first customer, realising that the WM solution template delivered by iQlink was a good fit for their needs. All other solutions that they considered were more complex, requiring skilled resources (mainly ABAP programmers) and more time to implement. The mobile solution also reduced the risk and the costs of support, and avoided the need for any additional middleware.

iQlink enabled warehouse staff to scan stock/pallet labels and confirm transactions. The solution automates the 5 SAP transactions above, saving staff time and reducing errors.

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Since this case study was written, Princes has rolled the solution out to a dozen of its warehouses. Princes were initially attracted to being able to automate a complex process in SAP using ECS and reducing data entry on the operators’ hand-helds to just two screens.

iQlink has since built a PC based PO approvals system so that Princes’ Managers can review and process purchase orders using a much friendlier interface than before. In its latest activity with Princes, iQlink is building an application that will integrate weighscales with SAP. 

Most recently, Princes Foods has enabled full integration with electronic weighscales in their production facility to SAP.

The solution, implemented by iQlink, is operated from a hand-held device which sends requests for a weight from a bar-code scanner to SAP. The solution in turn sends a signal to a weighscale, receives the weight back and then ask the user to confirm the goods issue on the hand-held terminal.

Northern Rail operates around 290 trains, almost 500 railway stations and provides nearly 2500 local and regional train services every weekday, making it the largest rail operator in the UK. The company operates three rail maintenance depots where carriages, electrical engines and diesel locomotives, wheel assemblies and braking systems are disassembled, cleaned, inspected, maintained and repaired or rebuilt.

iQlink implemented an IM template to manage the engineering stores and provide bin location management without SAP WM. Issues to Works Orders are carried out from a hand-held device. Northern Rail is testing a Shopping Cart Approval solution for their 100 managers’ BlackBerry smartphones, using the 10seconds Software solution.