Mexican retailer El Florido boosts its supply chain with Infor warehouse management system

El Florido supermarket chain has chosen the Infor WMS (warehouse management system) offering. This will be implemented by Infor partner Cerca Technology, a specialist in technology for supply chains in Latin America.

The retailer, located in Baja California Norte in Mexico, is aiming to streamline the times for the assortment in stores, increase the fill rate, a key indicator that establishes the percentage of the merchandise delivered of any given order, obtain a complete visibility of the inventory, and support branches with effective sourcing.

The business that began as a meat distributor grew to the point of needing to diversify its portfolio, including other product lines. This facilitated its expansion in cities including Tijuana, Tecate, Rosarito, Ensenada and Mexicali, up to 50 branches.

To meet the needs of all branches, it established a logistics operator in 2016, DFL Logistics, a company that manages inventory for all logistics operations that supply all branches, for both groceries and perishable products.

It was then necessary to implement a solution to digitise all processes for supply, demand planning, storage, and the delivery of orders.

Due to the growth and limitations of its internal development, several errors were detected in the distribution centres such as: the existence of phantom inventory, codes that were in a transfer state, and difficulties in filling orders, among others. Therefore, the company decided to look for a solution to overcome the challenges that arose.

Although its system was friendly and functional, it was overstretched to efficiently handle the expanding operation. The developers tried to find temporary solutions within the system, but this resulted in a repetitive process that affected the timing and delivery of orders. These problems became more frequent, inconsistencies began to severely impact the operation.

In addition, the procedure for measuring productivity in the distribution centre was very complex, making it difficult to optimise processes in the operation. All tracking was done manually and relied on basic estimating tools. This involved a considerable investment of time.

Through references and searches, the team in charge of the project at El Florido identified all the needs to be covered with a WMS. Misael Verduzco, Logistics Manager of DFL Logistics, highlights that "the use of tools such as WMS are of great help, because it takes advantage of automation, reduces operating costs, increases efficiency, improves responsiveness and decreases complexity for effective distribution centre management."

"We are confident that this new implementation will be successful. As inventory accuracy improves, the entire supply chain will benefit,” he adds.

“What impressed us the most was the attention we received from Cerca Technology from the beginning. Follow up, interest and participation were crucial in making the decision. Even when visiting our operations, they understood our needs closely, which resulted in a proposal very grounded to reality. We always felt supported."

Infor WMS provides real-time information, which helps El Florido measure processes and productivity accurately, centralise procedures, and provide greater flexibility in the planning and attention of orders from its customers. Likewise, it is expected to achieve control of cargo transport units (containers) and manage the registration in its warehouses, from entry to unloading.

Wilson Ortiz, Manager of Professional Services at Cerca Technology, points out that "once the team knew the interface of Infor WMS, and observed that it was intuitive and easy to use, adapting to it was more seamless versus competing solutions."

When referring to the future of the operation, Verduzco and his team are aware that implementation of Infor WMS is only the first step of the digital transformation to reach the performance and processes that are required and integrate a system that supports transportation management.

Alejandro Luna, Country Manager at Infor Mexico, says: “Infor WMS will benefit the activities of the distribution centres of El Florido in an integral way.”

“This solution combines warehouse assortment with integrated labour management and analytics to reduce complexity and enable optimised operational execution. Infor WMS is a state-of-the-art, best-in-class warehouse operations solution around the world, designed with ease of setup and intuitive use in mind.”