Chemical & Fertilizer

Another AECI group company, Akulu Marchon, has joined the ranks of the ever-growing base of DATASCOPE WMS users. Chemical Services is the speciality chemicals component of the AECI Group and Akulu manufactures and distributes raw materials to the surfactant, cosmetic, toiletry, detergent, pharmaceutical and selected performance chemical markets. The company manufactures and imports products from its Production and Warehousing facility in Chemserve Place in Chloorkop, Kempton Park.

After a User Acceptance Test in Port Elizabeth, the WMS implementation started with the signing off of the Functional Specification document on 26 April 2010. As soon as the WMS was installed in the site, the re-labeling of nearly 2,900 bulk bin locations on their
8,200m2 property could begin. Time was spent on user training and on the 21 June 2010, the site went live. The implementation took 35 working days.

As 200kg drums of the product are manufactured at their production facility, they are uniquely labeled with barcoded tracking IDs. These drums are then transported to the warehouse and are palletized using the new WMS ‘Palletisation’ scanner module – i.e. the consolidating of different tracking ID’s onto one new tracking ID, with the ability to ‘de-stuff’ the original tracking ID’s at a later stage and still retain their identity. The pallets are then Put Away into the warehouse in specific zones. Stock is reserved from their Customer Care Centre in Bryanstan and pick slips are printed in the Kempton Park warehouse. Drums are then picked and checked out using Intermec CK3 scanners and invoices print automatically for dispatch. Full truckload planning will be implemented as a further phase in months to come.