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ships approximately 10,000,000 units per year. With a high order volume along with storage capacity concerns, Empire Merchants turned to CIBER, an integration company, to better identify what warehouse management system would suit their needs. Empire���s Brooklyn facility had installed HighJump���s Warehouse Advantage system, which handles receiving, returns, inventory and replenishment. ���We chose HighJump Warehouse Advantage as our warehouse management system and CIBER as our integration partner based on their previous successful implementations with other wine and spirits distributors,��� said Tony Magliocco, COO, of Empire Merchants, in a press release. This system replaced a paper-based replenishment method while improving inventory accuracy. ���We couldn���t have picked a better software package and implementation partner than HighJump warehouse advantage and CIBER,��� said Magliocco. ���The software is working as the project team designed it. As a result, our fill rates have increased and our distribution costs have decreased dramatically.��� What lies ahead? Moving forward, industry experts are T expecting to see a shifting demand for cloudbased WMS along with other types of application software. One of the pros of using a cloud-based WMS is the ability to free up food and beverage managers from worrying about servers. ���The market is more open to cloudbased solutions now more than ever,��� says HighJump���s Radunz. ���This is primarily driven by the desire to focus more IT resources on core competencies related to serving customers better, rather than managing an IT infrastructure.��� Further enhancements with supply chain tracking and tracing will continue to be a future trend in the industry. With more stringent food safety standards on the way, the ability to seamlessly identify and track all food and beverage items will assist with staying compliant. Furthermore, the need for radio frequency identification (RFID) systems will continue to rise. An RFID system increases automation and generates accurate visibility in the warehouse while concurrently lessening misplaced food or beverage products. ���As products move through the facility, we���re not going to require the manual intervention of actually scanning barcodes or entering information into a mobile computer,��� says Accellos��� Collins. ���A lot of that information will be automatically fed into the warehouse management system via sensors and other technologies. ��� Tony���s Fine Foods: Stepping Up With Retalix���s WMS ony���s Fine Foods, located in West Sacramento, California, has been utilizing Retalix���s WMS solutions since 2003. Before deploying Retalix���s WMS solutions, the company used their own in-house WMS. As with most new software installations, Tony���s Fine Foods encountered a few challenges during the switch to Retalix���s WMS. ���The hardest challenge with anything is that you���re dealing with a partner that doesn���t work for you,��� says Mark Geery, CIO of Tony���s Fine Foods. ���You have to really stand up for yourself and make sure you cover all the areas that you need to cover. There were certain parts of the software that we had customized and made unique for our needs in our prior www.foodlogistics.com in-house WMS, [so] we had to take a little bit of a step backwards in those areas, but the gains of having a robust system with a company that can support it offset that.��� Warehouse managers at Tony���s Fine Foods, like Pete Moody, see the upside to working with Retalix���s WMS software. They are able to seamlessly manage their business and identify potential sources of problems in the warehouse. Additionally, the software helps to properly manage warehouse employees by measuring workers��� productivity and accuracy. The WMS becomes ���an extension of them,��� says Geery. Another benefit for Tony���s Fine Foods is having a system with real time inventory and traceability. Pre- FOOD LOGISTICS viously, the company would wait for invoices to post before the inventory would get updated. ���The fact that we���ve been able to double the size of our business in almost the 10 years that we���ve been on this WMS is a testimony that the software���s been a success,��� says Geery. ��� JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2013 49