BDI-Laguna, the national CE and IT distributor, has successfully completed a major overhaul of its fulfillment operations at the company’s three warehouses in Georgia, New Jersey and Nevada.
The upgrade, which was 18 months in the making, was completed on Oct. 31 when BDI-Laguna’s new .NET-based Warehouse Management solution for Windows, developed by Manhattan Associates, went live at the company’s New Jersey distribution center, the last facility to do so.
According to BDI-Laguna, the new platform will help the distributor reach its operational goals while increasing customer satisfaction and providing complete inventory visibility across its North American operations.
“Manhattan Associates’ Warehouse Management solution will be the backbone of our continued growth as a distributor and third-party logistics provider,” said Darren Marino, executive VP of BDI-Laguna. “We selected Manhattan Associates because of its reputation and its people and because its solution integrated with our existing enterprise resource planning system. The partnership has helped us streamline our fulfillment operations so that we can get goods into the hands of our customers.”
The solution was first implemented at BDI-Laguna’s warehouse operations in Reno, Nev., last July, and went live at the company’s Atlanta operations center in September. “At the onset of the project, Manhattan Associates provided us with a pre-established implementation plan and schedule, enabling all parties to stay focused on the ultimate goal and achieve our objectives in a timely and cost-effective manner,” noted Rosalie Weeks, information technology director/VP at BDI-Laguna.
Prior to implementing the Warehouse Management solution, BDI-Laguna’s enterprise systems had come together organically, as needed over time. The result was various systems interacting in the background for its customers.
Besides moving to a single platform, the distributor also automated its pick, pack and ship operations by supplanting packing stations with conveyor belts. “With the old system, people went to the product,” said VP/operations Steve Silverman. “With the new system, product is brought to the people.”
“We had reached a point where we had to reshape our systems while maintaining our operations, and Manhattan Associates fit the bill,” said Marino. Existing systems are now seamlessly and efficiently united — improving inventory control, reducing costs, enhancing inbound shipping and allowing performance and productivity to increase, the distributor reported.
Indeed, BDI-Laguna is now operating at 100 percent capacity vs. 50 percent capacity prior to the upgrade, and has realized a five-fold increase in warehouse output. That, plus the scalability of the Warehouse Management solution, has prepared the distributor for its next phase of growth, executives said.
Moreover, the implementation of the upgrade was virtually invisible to BDI-Laguna’s retail customers, which include RadioShack, Amazon.com, Tiger Direct and the Home Shopping Network, the company said.
Along with the operational upgrade, BDI-Laguna also relocated and expanded its Atlanta facility from 50,000 square feet to 135,000 square feet, and consolidated its New Jersey operations from an 18,000-square-foot facility and a 40,000-square-foot facility into one new 80,000-square-foot distribution center in The Meadowlands area.
