17 February 2010

Manhattan Associates’ order fulfillment platform supports South Africa store network

Foschini Group, one of South Africa’s leading fashion and lifestyle retail chains, has deployed Manhattan Associates’ Warehouse Management solution (WMS) at two adjacent distribution centres (DCs) in Cape Town. The two facilities, covering 7,500 m2 fulfill store orders for the Markham and Exact! clothing divisions.

Foschini plans to roll-out the Manhattan solution across the remaining two DCs, also in Cape Town, in the coming months. These additional hubs comprise another 17,000 m2 of warehousing space. Collectively, the four warehouses serve 14 trading divisions and 1,500 stores across South Africa’s nine provinces, as well as neighbouring countries Namibia, Botswana and Swaziland.

The legacy system had been struggling to support business processes such as postponement, cross-docking, part order allocation and part order delivery, with upgrades taking as long as six months to implement. Foschini embarked on a complete supply chain improvement programme following a period of sustained growth. Manhattan’s WMS solution was selected to form the foundation of their revamped supply chain.