Fresh Office has been steadily growing over
the past 15 years - from originally offering just
300 SKU’s to now supplying a range of
4000+ products to over 450 customers.
The MultiPick® solution allows staff to jump into any stage of the process with very little training and exceptional levels of accuracy.
Fresh Office’s customers include giants like OfficeMax, The Warehouse, Warehouse Stationery, Office Products Depot, PB Tech and many more. Their mantra is to make things super easy for their customers and, with a paper-based picking system, that goal was becoming unfeasible. Fresh Office found their way to us via a supply chain consultant who had been impressed with the highly flexible nature of MultiPick® and our reputation for delivering when it matters most.
Cam Tingey, founder and MD at Fresh Office was keen that any Warehouse Management Software partner had an ownerto-owner, New Zealand based relationship and was keen to avoid any local re-seller/ agent operations. He had heard that Interlogic’s people truly understand the nuances of logistics and how to smoothly integrate into existing software. He needed a bullet-proof system that could be configured to his exact requirements and he wanted to deal with good people.
THE CHALLENGE
Like so many logistics operations, Fresh Office had stringent DIFOT customer delivery promises that they had to keep. They needed to have enough products on hand to manage next day deliveries and, with the rapid expansion of SKU’s being offered, better stock integrity and visibility were vital for business efficiencies and reporting. The Omicron epidemic and its damaging impact on finding and retaining staff meant that they also needed to dramatically speed up the process of onboarding new pickers, packers and dispatchers working in their warehouse. Just to add a little extra spice to the go-live, the implementation was to be carried out over a weekend heavily impacted by a Covid lock-down. Many staff were out of action with the virus and one of the biggest months of the year was looming large.
THE SOLUTION
After initial consultancy and several ‘deep-dive’ workshops to iron out the specifics of the specification, Fresh Office went for a Cloud based version of MultiPick®. This was configured to support the 3 different types of transactions they needed. MultiPick® was placed at the centre of a business-critical Process Flow. This Circular Flow of bulk inward goods, put-away, replenishment and orders flowing out into the distribution channels is the beating heart of Fresh Office’s operation.
The circular flow starts with receiving goods accurately using the Put Away function, so things are always stored at the correct Pick Face or placed into bulk overflow locations. Orders flow with a Purchase Order from Fresh Office’s ERP system called MoneyWorks into a Picking Queue where they are allocated to an operator who takes a printed token to their picking station.
The flexibility of MultiPick® was key as Fresh Office runs 3 quite different types of transactions through one 1500m² warehouse:
- Pallet Deliveries to the DC’s of large customers
- Carton deliveries to the nationwide branches of retail and B2B customers
- Drop Shipping Fulfillment for e-commerce transactions
“Handheld scanners tell my guys exactly where to go, what to pick and the location barcoding and verifying system drives up my levels of stock integrity and visibility.’’
Cam Tingey CEO, Fresh Office
The simplicity of the system means that a new staff member can be onboarded and productive as a picker in under 15 minutes. An inventory checker now gets up to speed in under an hour.
On returning to the Fresh Office Pack Desk, picked orders flow to a Staging Area for a scan check where an order is closed off in MultiPick® and processed for invoicing and delivery using Starshipit.
The warehouse staff can now be much more nimble, covering off each other’s role in the system with a common user interface and an intuitive process. Meanwhile up in the management office, Cam and his team can run their eyes over all the staff performance metrics in hit those DIFOT agreements.
THE BIG WEEKEND
As always with the changeover of a business-critical operation the stakes were high. An agile team including an IT consultant and 2 MultiPick® integration experts had the full backing of the Fresh Office management and operations team.
Everyone had a vested interest in making it work. The system was installed on a Friday, a full inventory was taken and by Monday we were tested and operating live. Interlogic’s credentials of pulling-off such a nimble changeover for dozens of other businesses instilled the confidence that it could be managed.
WHAT’S NEXT FOR FRESH OFFICE?
With demand growing for work-from-home offices and large retailer orders multiplying, Fresh Office is now well positioned for future growth. The system can expand with them as they add new distributors and grow volumes with minimal tweaks. Overall there has been great collaboration between the two teams and the processes are always being optimised to finetune the flows.
“Interlogic proved themselves to be an agile and hardworking bunch. I’ve been involved with other integrations but these service levels were on another level.”
Sid O’Halloran, Warehouse Manager
