Mexico’s El Florido supermarket chain has chosen the Infor WMS warehouse management system to optimise its operating times throughout the supply chain.

This will be implemented by Infor partner Cerca Technology, a specialist in technology for supply chains in Latin America.

The supermarket chain, located in Baja California Norte in Mexico, dedicated to the commercialisation of meat-based products and groceries, aims 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, with up to 50 branches.

To meet the needs of all branches, the company 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.

With El Florido’s growth, it was necessary to implement technology 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. Therefore, the company decided to look for a way to overcome the problems that arose.

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

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.

“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,” said Misael Verduzco, logistics manager of DFL Logistics. “We are confident that this new implementation will be successful. As inventory accuracy improves, the entire supply chain will benefit. 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.

“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 options,” said Wilson Ortiz, manager of professional services at Cerca Technology.

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.

“Infor WMS will benefit the activities of the distribution centres of El Florido in an integral way,” said Alejandro Luna, Mexico country manager for Infor. “This combines warehouse assortment with integrated labour management and analytics to reduce complexity and enable optimised operational execution. Infor WMS is state-of-the-art, best-in-class warehouse operations around the world, designed with ease of setup and intuitive use in mind.”

DFL Logistics has a team of more than 210 people, while the El Florido (elflorido.com.mx) business group, as a whole, employs approximately 3500 people. El Florido has two distribution centres of 10,000m² each, where 80 per cent of the space is destined to groceries and the remaining 20 per cent to perishable products. The company handles a total of 2500 SKUs in groceries and 120 SKUs in perishables. Its transport fleet has 27 vehicles, 42 boxes and eight double-trailer equipment.

Cerca Technology (cercatechnology.com) is an Infor (www.infor.com) partner for implementing logistics technology for supply chains. Over 30 years, it has implemented more than 300 projects for companies in Latin America and the Caribbean. Its clients are in 16 countries, and it has four corporate headquarters in Colombia, Chile, Mexico and the USA.