Every new customer brings their own process
A fulfilment partner has no assortment of its own. The customers determine the work. One sells gaming chairs, another mainly ships abroad. Each of those webshops asks for different arrangements: what kind of products they are, how the order flow runs, and whether orders are split or combined.
MoreStorage makes most of those choices itself. "The customer doesn't have much to do with that. We often know best ourselves how such a process works," says Midas Christiani. What the company needs for that is a system that can handle all those differences without the floor suffering from it.
From counting products on a packing slip to recording every step
Midas started at MoreStorage as an order picker and now manages the applications. When he joined, the warehouse still ran on an older version of Ceyenne. Packing went by packing slip: count the products, tick them off and move on. Some steps were scanned, but a lot went by eye.
After that, the warehouse moved to the packing app and to a way of working in which the system checks every step. That took getting used to. "You go from scanning certain things to a process in which everything is checked and everything is tightly fixed," says Midas. "At the start that is hard to set up." The warehouse has now run like this for years, and according to him that mainly brings calm.
A new customer is up and running within a day
To connect a new webshop, MoreStorage works with a fixed checklist. A sheet lists everything that has to be arranged before a customer goes live. That is why the size of the customer hardly matters.
"We can really implement a new customer within a day. It doesn't matter how big or how small," says Midas. That holds as long as no customisation is needed. The days that sometimes get added are mostly in the agreements with the customer beforehand. Customers who ship internationally ask for a bit more work, but the team knows exactly what is needed for that.
The differences are mostly in what a customer picks up themselves. One asks for an API and then arranges almost everything without help. Another needs guidance at every step. Getting really stuck has not happened so far.
A sixteen-year-old intern picked orders without any questions
On the floor the system works the other way round: as few choices as possible. Two weeks before this conversation, a sixteen-year-old intern was working alongside. He went to help out with order picking. "He had no questions. He just joined in straight away," says Midas.
Especially in busy periods, that is what MoreStorage needs. Someone gets a scanner and gets started, without a colleague having to walk along for days. In the warehouse they call that foolproof.
With five minutes of explanation, someone can already join in. Here's a scanner, off you go.
Midas Christiani, application manager at MoreStorage
For stock movements, inspection and the packing app it is different, because those require more knowledge.
Zones and pick batches determine who walks where
In the past, all pick jobs were on the same screen and everyone walked all over each other. Now MoreStorage works with pick batches and zones. Certain people walk certain zones, others handle oversized products or pallet orders. On the scanner, an employee chooses for themselves which zone they are working in.
A picker therefore no longer jumps from one customer to another, or from one corner of the warehouse to the next. "You simply work in a kind of environment," says Midas. "You can steer people much better that way." Through roles, permissions and zones, the system sends the right work to the right people. Ceyenne collects the orders first and only then releases them. Orders from customers that MoreStorage prefers to have picked separately are assigned in the same way.
From Ceyenne's data, MoreStorage also built its own overview for daily planning. It shows how many hours of work there are and how much manpower is available against it, so the team can see in time whether people need to be moved.
The stock is almost always right
During packing, the system checks what the picker has collected. In addition, MoreStorage counts all year round. The products are divided into categories, with some categories coming up more often than others. Through the API, the company creates several cycle counts every morning, so that every product is counted a fixed number of times per year.
Counting during order picking comes on top of that. If a pick location drops below ten pieces or is almost empty, the employee reports how many are left. The team looks into differences with the system afterwards and corrects them. MoreStorage started this about two years ago and has now run on it for a full year.
That is why our stock accuracy is almost one hundred percent.
Midas Christiani, application manager at MoreStorage
If something does go wrong, the team notices immediately. "If someone picks something wrong or if there is too little, a bell starts ringing straight away," says Midas. "Then you can look up your mistake and fix it."
A solution for one customer often helps the next
MoreStorage regularly comes with wishes for which Ceyenne has no functionality yet. "We also often ask for things that Diract doesn't know about at all yet," says Midas. The company pays for development hours, so someone is always available when a new question comes up.
For a customer who works with serial numbers, the team looked together with Diract for a new route via the packing app. When a webshop that also works with serial numbers was added shortly afterwards, the solution was already there.
By doing the groundwork for one customer, we can make the next one happy with work that is already there.
Midas Christiani, application manager at MoreStorage
Midas likes to test himself. "It's simply a lot of fun to puzzle a bit: what works and what doesn't," he says. That he comes from the floor and not from IT hardly matters, as long as someone points him in the right direction. "They give a clear answer if something can't be done or if they don't have something," he says about Diract. "But it's never that it doesn't work out."
The collaboration now also continues outside the system. Midas gave three to four demos for companies considering working with Diract. Two of them became customers, he says.
Returns and a new interface are next on the list
MoreStorage wants to use Diract's returns app much more widely and move inspection entirely into the packing app. In addition, Ceyenne's new interface is planned, and the team is looking at processes it has not run before, such as second-chance products.
Precisely because things are running well now, Midas looks at every change with healthy suspicion. "It's been very stable for a very long time and keeps getting a little bit better. That's why I'm always a bit wary of new changes." As far as he is concerned, a new environment should work just like the scanner on the floor: someone gets it in their hands and can start.