Cold and frozen logistics service provider Frigolanda started the implementation of a new WMS system at the beginning of April this year. Herman Toonen, commercial director of Frigolanda, shares why the choose Boltrics.

The organization, specialized in the storage and distribution of conditioned food, implements the WMS solution Nekovri Dynamics over their Dutch cold stores in Beuningen, Oosterhout, and Dongen. The implementation of this industry-specific WMS must be completed by the end of March next year. The branches in Poland, East Germany, and Belgium will follow. Frigolanda used until now three different WMS solutions.

“In the Netherlands, we worked with a specifically customized IBM package on an AS400 platform. That always worked great, but we noticed that with this solution we experienced difficulties to meet the wishes of our customers concerning SSCC labeling, setting up interfaces and sending EDI messages. We had to write a separate piece of customization every time,” says Herman Toonen, commercial director of Frigolanda. This resulted in what Toonen calls ‘a spaghetti of tailor-made solutions’ that at some point were no longer able to communicate well with each other. “Causing problems when compiling reports and overviews. We made it increasingly difficult because we applied too much customization to the WMS.”

Thanks to their new WMS, Frigolanda can use the same method at every location in the Netherlands. Toonen: “Besides, we can store stocks from a client over several warehouses. With our old WMS, we had to create a separate client every time.” Working with paper pick lists is also a thing of the past. “Every picked order had to be checked off a list. Now order pickers get real-time order information on their scanners during picking. That also gives us much more insight into the performance of an order picker.” Another major improvement is the tracking & amp; tracing functionality. “That is very extensive. For example, we also scan the trailers of our trucks that are loaded with pallets. Besides, Nekovri Dynamics has an add-on that allows us to link documents and photos to orders.”

Toonen notes that opting for Dynamics seemed the obvious choice since Frigolanda in the Netherlands already runs the financial department and transport on the Microsoft Dynamics platform. “This WMS is standard ‘Dynamics NAV’, supplemented with specific functionalities, aimed at our industry. All these packages also have the same database structure, and that makes interfacing with each other a lot easier. This also benefits management reports that we get Jet Reports from our business intelligence program.