8/16/05 - Vivato, Inc. announced that its equipment
has resolved a major warehouse inventory management problem for Columbia
Distributing, the nation's largest purveyor of micro-brewed beer and the largest
fine wine distributor in the Northwest, marketing beverages to 85 percent of the
Pacific Northwest region.
After installing 25 low-powered Access Points to manage inventory and
customer business in its cavernous, 356,000 square-foot warehouse in the Seattle
suburb of Renton, Columbia discovered that those radios couldn't transmit a
signal throughout the hundreds of rows of beer and wine, making instantaneous
inventory reports impossible. To resolve the problem, Columbia chose to
implement Vivato's Smart Wi-Fi architecture, which provides an extended reach,
cellular-like solution to wireless communications on economical Wi-Fi
frequencies.
Columbia warehouse personnel now rely on two Vivato Indoor Base Stations and
four Microcell AP (Access Point) to monitor supplies for Columbia's extensive
Pacific Northwest customer base. The base stations, measuring about two-feet
square, combine patented signal steering technology and a phased- array antenna
to cover up to 12 times the area of other solutions. With the Vivato technology,
signal loss is minimal compared to traditional systems with scores of
low-powered transmitting sites. Because less equipment and network connections
are required, Vivato can provide a much lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) to
the customer.
Shanuj Sarin, Vivato senior systems engineer, said the entire Columbia
installation, from site survey to full deployment, took less than four days. "We
first did a comprehensive site survey to determine how to best cover the huge
warehouse," said Sarin. "The numerous glass bottles stacked on metal shelves
produced a very high multi-path environment, which can be a problem for wireless
signals, and the 40-foot high ceilings were another cause of signal weakness."
To overcome these obstacles, Sarin recommended installing two Vivato Base
Stations and four Microcells to maintain a signal-to-noise ratio of 25db, which
he considered necessary to maintain network connectivity.
"Columbia prides itself on using technology to better serve our customers,"
said Marna McCuen, information services manager. "All ordering and management of
customer business is done by hand-held devices, and we just couldn't get them to
work at the Renton warehouse. The Vivato equipment has completely turned the
situation around, and now we can update our inventory as often as
necessary."
