Case Study: RedPrairie's Warehouse Management/HF Improves Productivity And Efficiency At Furniture Retailer's Distribution Center

By Red Prairie

El Dorado Furniture boasts ten successful south Florida locations, including El Dorado's "Boulevard" stores, which offer customers a furniture shopping experience like no other. This concept includes park benches, streetlights, a café and even live music. The company's creative approach to furniture sales and their "Same Day Delivery" have led to extraordinary growth. This requires equally creative, highly effective solutions to warehouse management and customer service issues. To effectively manage the company's 375,000-square-foot Miami distribution center, El Dorado selected Warehouse Management/HF from RedPrairie.

In 2001, El Dorado had more than $115 million in sales and moved 440,000 pieces of furniture through its distribution center. With so much merchandise on the move, the company's existing warehouse management system simply couldn't keep up. "Our previous system was a batch barcode system used only for receiving, so we did a lot of work by hand and the paper trail was enormous. Not to mention, if you lost a piece of paper, you lost a piece of furniture," said Jesus Capó, vice president of El Dorado.

Rather than upgrading its system, the company wished to implement a full-blown WMS. "With our sales volume expected to double over the next two years, we knew we needed a system that could manage all of our warehouse operations," Capó said.

Warehouse Management/HF now manages El Dorado's entire warehouse operation, including putaways, picks, customer pickups, relocations, and damaged merchandise. The system determines the location of the needed merchandise and directs forklift operators to the correct location. "The system knows the volumes of the pieces, whether they've been assembled or treated, or if an item is out of the carton. With Warehouse Management/HF, we can locate any piece in the warehouse at any time, and are able to promote cross-docking and interleaving, so there are no wasted trips," said Capó.

Unlike most WMS packages, Warehouse Management/HF interfaces with GERS/Escalate, which is updated in real-time so sales personnel know immediately what is in the warehouse, and available for customers.