The company is also the leader of export, which at the moment is 50% of the total sales volume. Main directions of export sales are France, Great Britain, Germany, Scandinavian countries, Benelux, Switzerland, the USA, Canada, countries of the former Soviet Union. In 2005, KROSS opened its branches in Germany and in Russia. The company employs 1000 people and is the largest employer in the region. 
This dynamic development has pushed KROSS to build a modern manufacturing plant combined with a logistics center. The previously existing warehouses operated on a traditional basis, with the use of paper documents. Lack of explicit information about the location of a given batch of products and its current, actual quantity, as well as warehouse operator errors often led to incorrect data being entered into the ERP system.
It became necessary to implement Warehouse Management System to support the logistic warehouse management processes. The goal was to streamline and speed up warehouse workflow, which could be accomplished by optimizing inventories, controlling product localization, eliminating operator errors, automating data entry and introducing a fully electronic document workflow.
"When we were choosing our WMS system, we have focused on three basic criteria: the functionality described in the specification of requirements for a Warehouse Management System, drawn up as tender documentation, deployment deadline and costs. The tender has been won by a company that did the best job at meeting these criteria - Consafe Logistics. The company ensured a very short deployment deadline, at the same time guaranteeing high quality of execution and acceptable costs", explains Tomasz Zieliński, IT Manager at KROSS.
Stage I - Deployment of the radio network and equipment delivery
Building a radio network inside the warehouse allowed using mobile hand-held terminals, forklift truck terminals and scanners. All chosen devices are designed to work in difficult warehouse conditions (dust, humidity, high or extremely low temperatures). As an additional advantage, the terminals all have large, high-contrast displays. The applied devices support the work of the operators, directly increasing their efficiency and reducing the number of errors. KROSS has also purchased industrial printers designed for warehouse conditions (steel housing, wind-resistant, temperature fluctuation resistant). First, the labels printed by these printers were used to mark warehouse locations. Currently, labels are printed to mark received goods, issued pallets, parts for manufacturing, etc.
Stage II - the WMS deployment
One of the basic advantages of the WMS was the possibility to integrate it with Scala Business Solutions - the ERP system used at KROSS. The solution streamline such warehouse operations as: external delivery acceptance, semi-finished product acceptance, raw material picking for manufacturing orders, picking location replenishment. The WMS also enables efficient work distribution among staff. Stocktaking, which used to be a time-consuming operation and required shutting down a part of or the entire warehouse, can now be significantly faster, carried out "in the background", without colliding with other warehouse processes. The WMS also allows for real-time reporting.
How does it work at KROSS?
The KROSS warehouse consists of a raw material warehouse and a customs warehouse. It is equipped with pallet, shelf and flow racks. The goods are stacked in blocks and each stacking location has a unique ID. Currently, a sample manufacturing order picking can be executed in the following manner: a pedestrian operator receives information about the need to pick a specific manufacturing order (MO) on his radio terminal display. The system reserves raw materials in their storage locations and establishes a passage route in order to shorten the time needed for the operator to reach the required location as much as possible. The terminal displays an order to collect raw materials from a given location. The operator goes to the storage location, scans the cluster location label and the product label with his terminal, and collects the goods. Next, the terminal display shows an order to collect from the next location.
A sample transport job may consist of activating manufacturing orders in a PC dialog box, and then generating pallets from deliveries. The system creates a queue of pallets waiting to be transported. After logging in, the truck operator scans the code of the nearest shelf. Using this information, the system tells the operator to transport the nearest pallet. The terminal display shows an order to collect a pallet from a specified location and its destination. When the transport job is complete, the system issues the operator with an order to transport the next nearest pallet. 
By deploying the WMS system, the company has been able to significantly speed up all warehouse operations, especially thanks to automatic data entry and electronic document flow, which led to elimination of human errors. The number of warehouse employees has decreased by as much as 20%. The possibility to evaluate the input of each individual fairly opened allowed to introduce an incentive scheme.
"KROSS has been benefiting from the WMS coupled with Scala Business Solutions in the parts and semi-finished products warehouses, supporting delivery acceptance and manufacturing order picking. This solution allows creating all the source documents in Scala as it was before, while the WMS is responsible for sound warehouse management. This significantly streamlines workflow, first of all by eliminating errors during acceptance and picking, as well as by speeding up these operations", says Tomasz Zieliński, IT Manager at KROSS, responsible for system deployment.
Read more at
www.kross.pl
2005