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South African retail giant with integrated warehouse and fulfilment platform at Cape Town distribution centres

South African retail giant with integrated warehouse and fulfilment platform at Cape Town distribution centres

 

Foschini Group, one of South Africa’s largest fashion and lifestyle retail chains, has deployed supply chain optimisation provider, Manhattan Associates’ warehouse management system (WMS) at two adjacent distribution centres (DCs) in Cape Town.

 

The two facilities, covering 80,000 square feet (7,500 square metres) fulfil store orders for the Markham and Exact! clothing divisions. Manhattan and local partner Supply Chain Junction, a specialist supply chain consultancy focusing on the South African market, collaborated on the project to provide Foschini with an order fulfilment platform.

 

Massive growth requires distribution scope

 

Foschini plans to roll out the Manhattan solution across the remaining two distribution centres, also in Cape Town, in the coming months. These additional DCs comprise another 182,000 square feet (17,000 square metres) of warehousing space. Collectively, the four warehouses serve 14 trading divisions and 1,500 stores across South Africa’s nine provinces as well as neighbouring countries Namibia, Botswana and Swaziland.

 

The legacy system had been struggling to support business processes such as postponement, cross-docking, part order allocation and part order delivery, with upgrades taking as long as six months to implement. Foschini embarked on a complete supply chain improvement programme following a period of sustained growth. Manhattan’s WMS solution was selected to form the foundation of their revamped supply chain.

 

“The warehouse management solution was delivered on time and under budget, thanks to the commitment and expertise of Manhattan and Supply Chain Junction,” explained Jan Tukker, Foschini group logistics director. “We reduced volumes for the switchover to the new system in case we needed to iron out any problems – but there weren’t any and within five days we were shipping greater volumes of goods than before.”