As a full service produce distributor, Four Seasons is unique in the industry.
It serves the entire range of retail, wholesale, and foodservice markets. The
company supplies a variety of wholesale distributors, and its trucks go direct
to many well-known restaurant and retail chains in the Northeast. Due to its
wide range of services, Four Seasons found itself expanding rapidly. The company
has recorded an average annual growth rate of 18 percent during its 30-year
existence. The company expects to deliver approximately 11 million cases of
produce this year.
Such fast-paced expansion, however, came at a price. Over the years, the
company added additional warehouses as growth occurred. Eventually, the company
had five facilities?#8364;”four for storage and repacking, and one for shipping.
?#8364;œProduct for daily shipping had to be pulled from multiple buildings,
transferred to the central shipping warehouse, slotted, selected, and loaded
onto trucks,?#8364;?says Nelson Longenecker, vice president of organizational
development at Four Seasons. ?#8364;œWe ran into traffic delays and other problems, and
were constantly under tremendous time pressure.?#8364;?/P>
To make matters worse, Four Seasons ran its distributed warehouse operation
using manual processes. This meant staff tracked inventory manually by keying in
every quantity received, transferred, and shipped and by applying labels to
every box for shipping. ?#8364;œWith so many manual transactions taking place, we
suffered from significant errors and were always one step behind the product,?#8364;?
says Longenecker. ?#8364;œIt wasn?#8364;™t uncommon to lose track of whole pallets, which
affected service levels and ate into profits.?#8364;?/P>
While these inefficiencies are a concern in any business, they?#8364;™re
particularly troubling in produce, where entire inventories turn every four or
five days, and many products are received and shipped within 24 hours of
receipt. Temperature and time sensitivity must be designed into the shipping and
receiving process to ensure high quality and to consistently fresh produce.
?#8364;œWe recognized we could dramatically improve the confidence of our sales and
buying teams by eliminating inventory mishaps,?#8364;?says Longenecker. ?#8364;œIf a buyer
knows he needs so many pallets of lettuce, the last thing you want is to have
too little in stock. At the same time, to maintain freshness, you can?#8364;™t
overstock.?#8364;?/P>
Realizing technology was the only sure route to continued growth; Four
Seasons initially identified over 100 WMS suppliers and evaluated their options.
They soon reduced the list to 25 vendors. Further pruning occurred at trade
shows, resulting in five finalists. All five prospective solution providers
demonstrated their systems at Four Seasons?#8364;™ Pennsylvania headquarters against a
basic requirements list that included real-time case and pallet inventory, voice
recognition for hands-free case picking, the continuation of previously realized
labor management gains, and system scalability to meet future needs.
The selection team
quickly identified the difference between the choices when they started to call
and visit references. Vendors with customers all using the same software release
running the same source code stood out. So did references that could configure
their systems in different environments without vendor assistance and customers
that had installed the system in subsequent sites independently. The selection
team wanted a vendor on a true Microsoft platform. In the end, Four Seasons
selected the Priya Warehouse Management System by Motek. 