CIOIN

Executive summary

For all businesses, growth is a good thing. More sales, more customers, more demand, more revenue. But growth has a funny way of exposing inefficiencies by shining a harsh light on wasteful, entrenched business practices, loosely stitched together by siloed IT systems, that lead to high operational costs and act as roadblocks to real change.

At Dorfman Pacific, a mid-market manufacturer and distributor of headwear and handbags, the business had always been about serving the Mom-and-Pop stores that had constituted the company's customer base since its inception in 1921. But although the company had kept current with fashion, its warehouse processes had scarcely changed during 86 years in the business.

"In the environment we had, it was a challenge to actually do a good job," says Mark Dulle, the IT services director for Dorfman Pacific, who came on board in 2003. "It was stressful and very difficult to maintain any level of quality and get it right." Executives at Dorfman Pacific could see the future and knew they faced a challenge in expanding operations using the existing warehouse and technologies. So starting in 2001, top management, most notably CEO Douglass Highsmith, began to push for a big technology-driven change to business as usual.

The impetus for Dorfman Pacific's warehouse makeover  came from the top. Highsmith had seen wirelessly enabled warehouse management systems and knew he needed something similar to cut labor costs and enable his company's long-term success. An outside consultant who reported in to Dulle and was embedded with the management team acted as the project manager. The project team consisted of managers from the distribution center, purchasing, customer service and sales. IT was responsible for hardware selection, hardware and software installation, and providing an administrator for the new warehouse management system application.

"We decided that if we're going to disrupt the warehouse, we're going to do it all at  once and get it done," Dulle says.

They hired Texas Bar Code Systems to conduct a radio frequency study to see if the wireless signals would play nice inside the facility's concrete walls, steel doors and metal racks, and to identify the best wireless access points. The IT infrastructure gluing this all together also needed a makeover. Dulle had to revamp the ERP system and ripped out the old networking, cables and switches, and upgraded to the latest and fastest network gear and fiber. After hiring Symbol Technologies for the wireless networking equipment, HighJump Software for the warehouse management system and Zebra Technologies for the bar-coding equipment, and selecting an integrator (RedLine Solutions), Dorfman Pacific could see its future warehouse.

The backbone would be a wireless local area network (with 802.11 connectivity) that utilized 15 wireless access points (APs) spread out over the facility that could simultaneously run the 802.11a/b/g bands on each AP. Warehouse staff would have 40 mobile and fixed-mounted computers on the forklifts at their disposal. The devices were kept simple: "[It was] all F1, F2, press this key, press this button - no mouse and no pen," Dulle says. In the back office, IT was set to roll out an upgraded ERP suite and the new warehouse management system that would direct the picking, packing and shipping processes using specialized logistics software.

Almost two years later, the vision of a wireless warehouse is a reality. Workers now take advantage of wireless networking, handhelds and scanners, bar codes, and streamlined shipping and receiving procedures. All product inventory is seamlessly tracked and there's not much paper floating around the warehouse. "As far as paper to manage inventory, we don't have it," Dulle says. "We had a significant increase in [shipments] during the last peak season, and we handled it with less people," he adds. "We can take market share from competitors because we can deliver faster now."