Urban Outfitters has chosen Manhattan Associates’ Warehouse Management System for improved supply chain visibility to support growth in Europe and consumer demand across multiple channels.

“With our continued growth and increasing sales straining our network, we decided to transform our supply chain processes with a long-term solution that could support operations across all of our multiple channels,” says Ken McKinney, executive director of logistics at Urban Outfitters. “We needed the capacity to handle high volumes, increase process efficiency, improve supply chain visibility and obtain meaningful performance measures.”

The company moved the fulfilment and call centre activities of its direct and wholesale channels to a facility in Trenton, South Carolina in the US and implemented Manhattan Associates’ WMS from the Manhattan SCOPE Distribution Management solution. To support its European retail operations, WMS was also implemented in its London-based retail distribution centre. In addition, the company plans to implement the system in two US retail facilities in Gap, Pennsylvania and Reno, Nevada, by the summer of 2011.

Since implementation, the retailer has experienced a number of benefits, including 35 per cent reduction in total labour, an 80 per cent cut in manifesting and invoicing processes, 66 per cent reduction in turn time through receiving - from three days to less than 24 hours - and a 60 per cent rise in put-away efficiency.

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