Mr Fothergill’s Seeds Installs WAERlinx to improve Efficiency across Three Sites

by | Mar 7, 2017 | Kitting, NetSuite, Uncategorized, WMS

Mr Fothergill’s Seeds Ltd is an established UK supplier of gardening products including flower and vegetable seeds, young plants, soft fruit trees and a range of garden equipment, fertiliser, pest control etc.  They have a broad mix of customers; both B2B e.g. garden centres and DIY merchants; and B2C e.g. allotment associations and consumers.

Fothergill’s has been using NetSuite for several years and they approached Waer Systems to provide better warehouse management across its three sites. WAERlinx’ renowned flexibility meant that the company’s specific requirements were easily accommodated into the package, including:

  1. A feature to allow the automatic build of works orders and commit the inventory to sales orders with minimal user involvement.
  2. The introduction of barcoding and scanners for receiving, putaway, pick and ship at their Kentford facility (including the ability to cluster pick a number of sales orders)
  3. Production of delivery notes that reflect the appropriate brands
  4. Integration to a number of carrier systems using GFS – Hermes, Royal Mail, Secured Mail, DX Nightfreight.

The company ships a huge number of order lines. For example, in one week they shipped over 16,900. So the potential for efficiency savings was huge.

How WAERlinx was configured to meet Fothergill’s requirements

Automatic Build of Works Orders

Once the inventory is received in WAERlinx, the purchase order is updated in NetSuite and the inventory is committed. WAERlinx users then release the items for picking by brand and/or product category.

WAERlinx adds the items to pick lists which are then given to the service provider, Rookery Farm Packing (http://www.rookeryfarmpacking.co.uk/) to manage all picking, packing and shipping of the items.

Once the items are physically picked and checked, packing lists and delivery notes are printed, and NetSuite is updated.  Once packed, the shipping label is scanned and the carrier booking is made.

Cluster Picking

This new feature in WAERlinx allows the user to restrict the number of sales orders assigned to a picker, giving Fothergill’s the flexibility to choose how they set up their operation and allowing them to manage the picking and packing functions together, should they wish.