Case Study: Enterprise Mobility A Healthy Ingredient In Sanitarium's Warehouse

By Alan Myers, IT business projects manager, Sanitarium

To overcome the challenges of managing four separate warehouses, Sanitarium Australia made the decision to consolidate the four warehouses into a single warehouse. At the same time Sanitarium planned a complete overhaul of its warehousing and supply chain processes.

However, moving into a single warehouse capable of holding up to 14,000 pallets would significantly increase stock movement and throughput, placing considerable pressure on Sanitarium's manual and paper-based warehouse management systems.

Alan Myers, Sanitarium's IT business projects manager, explained, "We introduced a new warehouse management system so we could handle the expanding volume in our distribution centre more efficiently. Consolidating our warehouses required a 50 per cent increase in the physical size of the distribution centre."

Sanitarium realised that besides needing to implement a new system for warehouse management, staff would need access to this system at the location where most of their work took place - on the warehouse floor. Mobile devices that featured radio frequency bar code scanning capabilities were the obvious answer to ensure staff had access to warehouse systems on the move. The challenge for Sanitarium was choosing the best device.

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