The Food Bank For New York City Installs
OpenWMS to Dish Out More to City's Needy

   Case Study  

Customer Profile

The Food Bank for New York City

Industry

Non-Profit relief Agency

Product

OpenWMS

Technology Expands Food Bank's Reach

Many Americans are struggling to make ends meet today. Organizations like the Food Bank For New York City are being challenged to extend a helping hand to as many people as possible.

The largest food bank in the country and leading distributor of free fresh produce, the Food Bank For New York City provides 67 million pounds of food annually to more than 1,100 nonprofit community food programs in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island -- that means 240,000 meals a day for New Yorkers who would otherwise go hungry. It also means a 100,000-square-foot warehouse with a tremendous amount of movement and workers who have a critical need to know where every item is every minute of the day.

To better handle this important task, the Food Bank needed to replace its largely paper-based tracking system, where physical inventories were done manually and adjustments key entered into the system. "It was not an instant system," says Antonio Peralta, Director of IT for the Food Bank For New York City. That, plus lost paperwork and inaccuracies, led Food Bank management to search for something that would help them better manage their inventory and better serve the citizens who relied on their services.

Solution found just around the corner

The Food Bank created a two-person team comprised of Carlos Linares and Tyrone Harrysingh to research possible solutions. The team discovered the food bank in nearby Krasdale had installed a system to tackle the same challenges the Food Bank For New York City was facing.

The application implemented at Krasdale featured hand-held terminals, bar code scanning and the Open Warehouse Management System (OpenWMS�) from Compsee (www.compsee.com). The flexible OpenWMS is a real-time system, with sophisticated receiving, directed putaway and picking features. Guillermo Fisher, the distribution center manager at Krasdale, told the project team about the application.

"We found that the price was within our range, and we heard a lot of good things about it, so we decided to go with it," says Peralta.

Integrator Compsee came out to the Food Bank facility to spec out the system and do a site survey to establish where access points would be needed for radio communications between the host system, hand-held terminals and forklift-mounted terminals workers used as they roamed the sprawling warehouse. Plans also needed to include a connection to Microsoft's Navision Financial System that Food Bank management planned to implement. The WMS was installed in 2002, and the financial end was connected in 2004.

Efficient from the start

The process starts when packaged food is received into the dock, which can handle daily deliveries from up to 12 tractor-trailer trucks. OpenWMS is used to receive the food there. Workers use the hand helds, HHP Dolphin 7200s (older hardware being slowly upgraded) and HHP Dolphin 9500s, to enter all the food by batch, since there is currently no wireless access point at the dock. Workers then move the foodstuffs on hi-lo forklifts to their warehouse locations, using their mounted Intelligent Instrumentation CE terminals with PSC PowerScan tethered scanners to read the bin bar code (all are Code 39) and record the exact location in the system. DAP 9800 rugged hand-held terminals are used in the large walk-in freezer. Then the food waits, on pallets stacked 35 feet high, to be repacked to fill orders for organizations which provide the food to the hungry.

When an order is taken through Navision, also called CERES, it gets sent to the WMS database for transfer into the hand helds. The Logistics department prints out bar-coded pick lists, which are sent to the warehouse supervisor, who distributes them to workers. The workers take the pick list and head out to the bins with confidence, having scanned the bar code on the list to get the exact location of what they need. For each item/pallet picked, workers scan the pallet bar code and enter the amount on their terminal so the system can keep track of their work.

When the last item is scanned, the system displays "Order complete" on the terminal to verify picking is done correctly. Workers then send that information back to the host running Windows SQL Standard 2000. The host shares it with the financial system, which invoices the order and adjusts the inventory.

(Ed. Note: Compsee has since upgraded the operating system to Windows 2003 Server 64 Bit, and the database to SQL Server 2005.)

Storage amounts impact access points

As usually happens with implementations, a few bugs had to be worked out of the new system. Though it started out with five access points, the Food Bank ended up needing three more, for a total of eight. "Compsee did the site survey when the warehouse wasn't so full," notes Peralta. "With more food stored, we found we needed more access points to work around the interference caused by the stacked food."

It was a vexing problem that took a while to solve. "I wish we had done more research on site surveys. I think we could have figured out the problem sooner," he says, adding Compsee was very responsive and worked hard to address every concern.

Peralta also needed to adjust the way users accessed and updated data. "It's an open system, which is great, but that meant anyone could go directly into the tables, and we didn't want that," he says. The simple solution was to insert a graphical user interface, a form workers fill out that updates the tables, preventing any accidental corruption.

"The adjustments were made, and now it works great. Just the way we intended it to," he adds.

Accurate inventory affects everything

Having a constantly updated inventory that truly reflects what is on its shelves has had an impact on all parts of the Food Bank, says Peralta. In the warehouse, "there's no more paper and writing down quantities, which was very time-consuming. It's easier to select orders -- workers know where they need to go," he says.

Because the WMS and order-taking systems are so well-integrated, the logistics department, where orders are processed, runs much more efficiently. "There's no paper, and they don't have to go to the WMS front end because both systems communicate so well," says Peralta.

The system also has made a huge difference in Agency Services, which provides customer service for all their programs. The real-time aspect allows workers to say with conviction what they can provide because they know for certain what is in stock. The system also monitors product circulation so the warehouse operates on a first-in, first-out (FIFO) basis that maximizes food use.

Finally, the IT department, "which consists of me," laughs Peralta, "is very happy with it. It's been great." He spends much less time troubleshooting and working to make sure everyone has the information he or she needs. And he has much more data available. "With the old system, we had to do physical checks to track down product, and we couldn't backtrack as far as with this system."

A surprise benefit for Peralta was the incredible number of reports he could produce. "We can provide lots of detailed reports to different departments. This reporting tool allows us to make better, more accurate and faster decisions," he says.

The Food Bank's paybacks are inventory integrity, accuracy, better customer service, and, of course, productivity. Now, workers conduct physical inventories three to four times faster than before. That means more food goes out more quickly -- distribution has increased 6 million pounds from the previous year to 67 million pounds of food in 2004.

That doesn't mean the Food Bank is satisfied yet. Though no changes are planned for the immediate future, Peralta says, "We need to take full advantage of the system as it is right now. I think we can improve how we use it." For example, new reports are always being requested, and the older hand helds continue to be slowly upgraded.

For now, however, this is a great improvement. "We are distributing more food to the needy," says Peralta. "That's what it's all about."

Benefits:

• Inventory conducted three to four times faster

• Accuracy increased dramatically

• Report capabilities and data availability greatly enhanced

• Money saved by blending older hardware with new system

• Less time spent troubleshooting system

• Better tracking capabilities

• More efficient system allows more food to be distributed to cities needy