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"NATIONWIDE PAPERS IMPLEMENTS WMS"
Nationwide is a national distributor and converter of printing and writing papers and industrial products, including packaging material and equipment, tissues, paper towels, soaps, and waxes. Headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, Champion International's roots as an integrated forest products company reach back to the 1890s; today it employs 24,000 people. Distributing a broad product line to some 30,000 accounts across the U.S. presents certain logistical challenges. Bill Tyng, manager of national warehouse operations, and Gene Moyer, operations specialist are both handling systems integration for Nationwide Paper. "Our inventory accuracy wasn't where we wanted it, resulting in order errors and occasional poor inventory management decisions," Mr. Tyng said. Nationwide Papers maintains a centralized mainframe inventory system on the company's IBM mainframe host, located in Hamilton, Ohio, along with corporate administrative and IS support, Mr. Tyng explained. "We have 28 distribution centers, all receiving orders from the centralized order processing mainframe. The IBM application is excellent at transaction processing but falls short in detailed inventory location accuracy." "In our market," he continued, "competitive pricing has become a business reality. Areas that can set you apart from your competition are product availability and value-added services. Often, if we can get the product to the customer faster, we get the order. Our business is based on margin, and decreasing inventory costs is critical. We felt we had excess inventory out there as a safety factor. In January 1995, the company began considering implementing computer control systems in its distribution sites, primarily to enhance its competitive position. However, customer compliance issues also came into play. "Many of our customers were moving toward tracking product more accurately, and they wanted some automated means of bringing our shipments into their systems," Mr. Tyng explained. "Roll product has come a long way toward standard identification. THE STATE OF THE PAPER INDUSTRY STANDARDIZATION Most paper mills, according to Mr. Tyng, barcode rolls using what used to be called TAPPI (Technical Association of the Pulp and Paper Industry) number and is now referred to as the North American Roll Identifier number (as proposed by the Graphics Communication Council). It includes the mill identifier and other manufacturing information such as reel, sequence, and/or lot number, and shift and date identifiers. But these barcoded numbers lack uniformity, varying in format from mill to mill. The National Paper Trade Association is currently working with the Uniform Code Council to establish a series of barcode standards for North American paper products, including identifiers for rolls, skids, cut sheets, cartons, and envelopes. At press time, a standards proposal was being prepared for presentation in November to the Paper Distribution Council and the Graphics Communications Council. SCOUTING WAREHOUSE DISTRIBUTION SYSTEMS "We had some pressure from customers for compliance labeling, Mr. Tyng continued. "But more importantly, we were approaching a business climate where operating costs, accuracy, and product availability were going to be much more critical than in the past. Inventory availability is a strategic advantage, and we had to be ready. Enhancing our centralized inventory function would not only cut internal costs but also give us a competitive edge. Over the next year, the company looked at some 30 to 35 warehouse management system (WMS) providers, big and small. "Beforehand," said Mr. Tyng, "I knew I wanted to steer away from any proprietary database, and I also wanted a PC-based Windows NT platform. Windows NT shows the greatest potential for growth because of its stability and suitability in a distributed environment. Its client/server approach is more stable than other network configurations and less prone to system shutdowns. I wanted a system as close to bulletproof as possible, because we'd be putting servers out in the field without a lot of monitoring expertise onsite." Several WMS providers offered Nationwide a Windows NT client/server platform. But the fact that ScanData Systems of Dublin, Ohio was also aggressively configuring its entire DCS 7.1 WMS around Microsoft products was especially appealing to Mr. Tyng. ScanData's DCS 7.1 uses Windows NT Server 4.0 and the SQL 6.5 database manager with a suite of RF-based Microsoft BackOffice applications (receiving, putaway, cycle counting, picking, packing, shipping, and compliance labeling). ScanData also supplies hardware and peripheral equipment, which includes Intermec's 2.4 GHz spread spectrum network with Janus 2020 handheld terminals. "Within Nationwide, the centralized system managed office tasks adequately, but once in the warehouse we were paper-based," Mr. Tyng said. "We had what I call data dead-ends--too much information that had to be re-entered. For example, the hard copy purchase order that went to receiving was already old data as soon as it was printed. Often product would arrive that had been an add-on to the PO, but there was no record of it in the receiving department. And after product was received, data had to be rekeyed after delivery." Currently, Nationwide has three distribution sites up and running on the new WMS, according to Mr. Tyng. Glendale Heights, near Chicago, was installed in late 1996, and the company's Arlington, Texas, and Kansas City Missouri sites have also recently gone live. "In Kansas City, we just added a roll sheeter, automatic roll wrapper, and 150,000 square feet of floor space to what is now a 280,000-square-foot facility," he noted. "The WMS system went in at the same time. We run about 400 orders a day there, averaging 8000 orders out the door over [the course of] a month." The system was designed using the data replication capabilities inherent in Microsoft SQL 6.5. A central replication server linked to the IBM host at Hamilton Ohio manages all distribution site data communications coming into central processing. Each site has a local server connected to the replication server via T1 frame relay sites. "We knew we would eventually have multiple sites. Rather than having each site manage its own data transfer, the replication server offers a much more efficient way of handling data," Mr. Tyng said. "Each site dialing in to download sales orders would have taken up several minutes; with SQL data replication, it takes seconds." At each site, the RF network is interfaced directly with the local server so that the Janus units, in effect, communicate directly with the database. Throughout the facility, data is transmitted via access points: PCs connected to antennas, which are wired to the server through the network backbone, pass data off from one zone to another. "This configuration allows speedier transaction throughput and a highly redundant system, because of a lot of overlap between access points," Mr. Tyng noted. "The direct interface to the server also eliminates the vulnerability of an RF network to communications controller shutdown."
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