Ricoh Americas Corporation Transforms Warehouse and Transportation Management, Cutting Order Picking Time by 25% and Reducing Labor Costs
 
 

Ricoh Americas Corporation Transforms Warehouse and Transportation Management, Cutting Order Picking Time by 25% and Reducing Labor Costs

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Ricoh Americas Corporation (Ricoh) is a subsidiary of Ricoh Company, Ltd., the 75-year-old leading provider of advanced office technology and innovative document imaging products, services, and software, with fiscal year 2010 sales in excess of US$23 billion. Ricoh’s fully integrated hardware and customizable services and software help businesses share information efficiently and effectively by enabling customers to control the input, management, and output of documents. Ricoh markets and distributes products in North, Central, and South America, directly or through its network of authorized dealers.

Ricoh was using paper-based processes to track and manage orders and inventory in its distribution centers and configuration centers. These paper-based processes required handoffs within operations making Ricoh less efficient and accurate than it wanted to be. In addition, Ricoh needed to resolve a complex data compatibility issue resulting from its various suppliers using different barcode standards and formats.

After rolling out Oracle E-Business Suite across all facilities, Ricoh was ready to modernize its supply chain. It worked with Data Systems International® (DSI®) and Infosys to implement Oracle Warehouse Management and Oracle Transportation Management and integrate the applications with the full enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. Ricoh now uses the Oracle system in its receiving, put-away, picking, packing, and shipping processes in 17 distribution and configuration centers. It has cut order picking time by 25%, decreased receiving time from eight hours to three, and consolidated its number of freight carriers from 60 to approximately 15.

 
 

 
 

Challenges

A word from Ricoh Americas Corporation

  • “With Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12, including Oracle Warehouse Management and Oracle Transportation Management, we have significantly reduced order picking time and improved receiving time by 60%. These efficiencies, among others, have helped us reduce costs, improve supplier and carrier management, and enhance the service we provide to our customers.” – Balaji Rangaswamy, Vice President Enterprise Solutions, Ricoh Americas Corporation

  • Eliminate manual, paper-based processes to track and manage orders and inventory
  • Enable the document management systems and services company to resolve complex data compatibility issues among suppliers that use different barcode standards and formats
  • Deploy a new transportation management system to enable Ricoh to drill down into contracts and billing issues across many carriers
  • Improve warehouse management and transportation efficiency, while reducing errors throughout these business processes

Solutions

Oracle Product and Services

  • Worked with Data Systems International (DSI) and Infosys to implement Oracle Warehouse Management in six distribution centers and 11 configuration centers to automate manual-based processes, improve efficiency, and reduce costs
  • Implemented Oracle Transportation Management to improve visibility into freight in the field
  • Optimized transportation management planning to take full advantage of trailer capacity—consolidating the number of carriers from 60 to approximately 15 and reducing freight spend
  • Leveraged advanced barcode scanning capabilities within Oracle Warehouse Management to decode multiple barcode formats and recognize multiple supplier part numbers—eliminating the need to ask vendors to change part numbers, update the system to match vendor part numbers, manually key-in the numbers, or relabel parts
  • Cut order picking time by 25%—enabling warehouse employees to pick, pack, and ship orders within just nine hours each day
  • Decreased receiving time from eight hours to three hours—including completing all receipts and clearing the docks
  • Shortened physical inventory from two days to just six hours by leveraging the increased accuracy and efficiency provided by Oracle Warehouse Management Reduced labor costs and enabled Ricoh to reassign workers to other duties as needed
  • Automated serial number tracking through product configuration and fulfillment
  • Enabled license plate number control in the picking process
  • Used Oracle Warehouse Management labeling rules to automatically print and apply product labels, eliminating previous manual processes to create and verify accuracy of product labels as received from suppliers
  • Achieved a three-year return on investment

Why Oracle

Ricoh is a long-time Oracle E-Business Suite customer, and the ease of integration between its core ERP applications and Oracle Warehouse Management and Oracle Transportation Management—when compared to third-party options—made the Oracle solutions the clear choice.

Implementation Process

The first implementation of Oracle E-Business Suite began as a pilot in 2002 at IKON Office Solutions, Inc., which was acquired by Ricoh in 2008. Between 2006 and May 2008, it rolled the system out nationwide. During this timeframe, Ricoh realized it had significant challenges in its logistics space. It decided to move forward with the implementation of Oracle Warehouse Management and Oracle Transportation Management. It upgraded to Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 and completed the roll-out of Oracle Warehouse Management to 17 facilities in just 18 months—going live in July 2009. It implemented Oracle Transportation Management for freight invoice matching as well as inbound routing and load optimization over 15 months.

Partner

Ricoh selected Data Systems International® (DSI®), an Oracle Platinum Partner with specializations in consumer goods, natural resources, and oil and gas, for the implementation of the Oracle warehouse management system. DSI worked with Ricoh on solution design, implementation, and configuration of Oracle Warehouse Management to align the system with Ricoh’s business processes. Additionally, the solution included infrastructure labeling, data collection hardware, and configuration. DSI customized the solution to address Ricoh’s complex data compatibility issues around barcoding by utilizing Oracle’s facilities for advanced barcode scanning within the warehouse management system.

Ricoh later tapped Infosys, an Oracle Diamond Partner, to implement Oracle Transportation Management for freight reconciliation, load optimization, and route optimization. Infosys also assisted Ricoh in the warehouse customization, reversed logistics customer solution implementation, as well as rolling the solution out to 13 distribution centers and configuration centers.

By working with the Oracle specialized partners, Ricoh gained better visibility into inbound and outbound freight and freight cost; reduced freight spend; and improved management of the supply chain network, transportation costs, and activity via stronger control over planning, tendering, and execution of freight bill payments and settlements.
 
“The ease of the deployment can be attributed in significant part to the subject matter knowledge DSI and Infosys brought to the project. Their practices were quite good,” said Balaji Rangaswamy, vice president enterprise solutions, Ricoh Americas Corporation.

DSI’s dcLINK® Mobile Application Platform™ has achieved Oracle Validated Integration status with Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, and Oracle’s JD Edwards World.

Infosys has 25,000 consultants worldwide in Oracle practice and more than 20 specializations across the Oracle product portfolio.