From: ASAP
Manhattan Associates, Inc., a global leader of extended supply chain execution (x-SCE(TM)) solutions, announced that Gold Toe(R) Brands, Inc., a leading manufacturer of hosiery and long-time user of Manhattan Associates' industry leading supply chain execution solution, PkMS(R), has successfully gone live with the Company's dynamic routing functionality. Designed in close cooperation with major retailers and suppliers, Manhattan Associates' new functionality allows suppliers to comply with their retail customers' emerging requirements for dynamic routing. PkMS' support of the strategic initiative enables retailers to optimize and consolidate their shipments in a dynamic manner, which helps reduce transportation-related costs. For retail suppliers like Gold Toe, complying with dynamic routing initiatives has led to improvements in shipment planning and accuracy and streamlined order fulfillment processes.
This enhanced functionality was successfully deployed at Gold Toe's 400,000-square foot distribution center in Burlington, N.C. at the request of its customer, a major retailer, who made a strategic shift from using static routing guides to dynamic routing. The retailer was the first in the industry to ask its suppliers to use dynamic routing and worked directly with Manhattan Associates to determine operational strategies and specific system requirements to ensure industry-wide adoption.
"Manhattan Associates' clear leadership with the dynamic routing initiative helped ease our concerns about implementing this new functionality," explained Dale Bias, manager, application development for Gold Toe. "This proved to be the easiest implementation we've completed to date-a true testament to Manhattan Associates' project team and their dedication to delivering cutting-edge technology to support these new processes."
"At the request of the largest retailers and their suppliers, like Gold Toe, we hosted a symposium last summer to collectively discuss and develop supply chain processes and the technological requirements for supporting dynamic routing," explained Eric Peters, senior vice president of product strategy, marketing and alliances for Manhattan Associates. "The successful exchange of ideas at the symposium helped us develop a very flexible dynamic routing solution that delivers a tangible and quick ROI as demonstrated by the Gold Toe implementation."
By moving from a static to dynamic routing environment, retailers are able to improve the efficiency of inbound retail and catalog transportation routings. The process enables the retailer to evaluate incoming routing requests across all of its suppliers using dynamic routing and determine how they can optimize transportation of the collective shipments. By using dynamic routing across several suppliers, the retailer can consolidate numerous inbound parcel shipments into LTL shipments and consolidate LTL shipments into a truckload shipment. Through consolidation, the retailer is able to significantly reduce the costs it would incur with numerous LTL and parcel shipments from different suppliers going to the same location.
In addition, dynamic routing contributes to reductions in replenishment time by bypassing segments, such as a consolidator, throughout the transportation network. This enables retailers to more effectively manage the single largest and most controllable cost in the retail supply chain- transportation. Since retailers typically pay for the shipping costs associated with moving merchandise from a suppliers' distribution center (DC) to either the retailer's DC or to individual stores, the benefits of dynamic routing are substantial.
How Dynamic Routing Works at Gold Toe
The flexibility of Manhattan Associates' solution enables Gold Toe to determine when dynamic routing should be completed within the fulfillment process. While the supplier runs a planning wave and then sends the routing request, the functionality also allows suppliers to initiate dynamic routing after picking, packing, staging or pack and hold. Only after the routing response comes back from the retailer does Gold Toe begin picking, which means each carton is only touched once. In addition, the actual ship to location is known prior to printing UCC128 shipping labels, eliminating the need to relabel cartons to reflect ship to and carrier changes shown on a routing response. Further, Gold Toe is aware of the proper carrier routing up front and is able to process and stage its retailer-defined loads together.
"Dynamic routing has proved to be an asset for us," commented Barbara Bradham, operations manager for Gold Toe. "Utilizing these processes has helped us optimize our shipment planning and forced us to become more organized. As a result, we have experienced increased efficiency and productivity on the DC floor. I wish more of our customers were using dynamic routing so we could see these results across all of our shipments."
Since using dynamic routing, Gold Toe's shipping errors have been substantially reduced and the company has gained more exacting control over its shipments. An additional benefit of meeting the dynamic routing requirement is that Gold Toe's product is delivered to the shelf faster, minimizing stockouts and increasing inventory turns. The company also expects to see a considerable reduction in chargebacks as a result of implementing the dynamic routing process because issues such as early or late shipments or incorrect routing are minimized. Utilizing PkMS' functionality to support these processes enables Gold Toe to accommodate other retailers who are currently utilizing or will be implementing dynamic routing in the future.
About Gold Toe
Gold Toe Brands, Inc. is a premier manufacturer of men's, boy's, women's and infant's socks. In addition to the well-known GOLD TOE brand, a number of other brands and private labels are produced, which enable Gold Toe Brands, Inc. to capture a large share of department store and mass merchants markets.
About Manhattan Associates
Manhattan Associates, Inc., is the global leader of extended supply chain execution solutions. We enable operational excellence through real-time collaboration, execution and optimization. Our solutions leverage state-of- the-art technologies, innovative practices, and our domain expertise to enhance performance, profitability, and competitive advantage. Manhattan Associates has licensed more than 800 customers representing 1,100 facilities worldwide, which include some of the world's leading manufacturers, distributors and retailers. For more information about Manhattan Associates telephone 770.955.7070 or visit http://www.manh.com/ .
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