Interlink WMS and Zebra Solution for Tuesday Morning
Dallas, Texas-based Tuesday Morning is one of the nation’s most successful close-out retailers. Now in its fifth decade of operation, Tuesday Morning has more than 800 stores across the United States that specialize in deeply discounted upscale home furnishings, housewares, gifts, and related items. The company’s distribution center encompasses more than a million square feet, 45 shipping docks, 300 storage trailers, and 400 carrier haulers. Operations are spread over four warehouse locations, with more than 100,000 new SKUs annually.
As the company expanded rapidly, the business became increasingly complex and stressed the internally-developed, paper-driven warehouse management system (WMS) that used spreadsheets to manage all warehouse activities. As growth continued, the company experienced data entry delays, lost paperwork, and misplaced product that resulted in processing delays.
The company turned to Interlink Technologies to be its WMS provider, originally using Interlink’s DC Wizard and ultimately migrating to its Warehouse-LINK® solution. Warehouse-LINK® provides Tuesday Morning real-time tools to manage their inventory and perform critical-path functions:
- Managing and receiving inbound loads and product
- Scheduling and running production processing with real-time price tickets and packaging for store distribution
- Direct group-route product aggregation and consolidation for efficient outbound shipments
Further implementations have included integrations with a new ERP system, Pack-to-Light system, Pick-to-Light system, allocation system, and e-commerce.
Tuesday Morning personnel manage the warehouse with Warehouse-LINK®software on Zebra MC9200 mobile computers, considered by many the industry’s “gold standard” for mobility in inventory and asset management in the most demanding environments. The MC9200 provides Tuesday Morning exceptional device flexibility with a choice of three operating systems (Android KitKat, Windows Embedded Compact, or Windows Embedded Handheld), the ability to switch between operating systems, seven of Zebra’s most advanced scan engines, six interchangeable keypads, and ample power to support the WMS application. The MC9200 features a dual core 1-GHz processor, 2GB of Flash memory, and up to 32GB of additional SD memory to run complex applications simultaneously.
Powerful Results
The requirements at Tuesday Morning are demanding. Receiving requires an evaluation of the inventory to determine store allocation. Allocation is based on inventory levels as well as demographics such as store size and location. After determining store allocation, the inventory requires product repackaging to stores spanning 43 states.
The results since implementing Warehouse-LINK® on Zebra 9200s: Tuesday Morning calculates a 600 percent improvement in productivity, a 350 percent improvement in product throughput, and an accuracy rate greater than 90 percent.
That’s return on investment.
By Marty Weil (For more information about Marty, visit: http://martyweil.net/)
