Jennyfer's challenge: Optimizing its logistics to provide greater customer satisfaction
Over a 25-year period, Jennyfer, a women's ready-to-wear clothing chain, has become the benchmark fashion brand for adolescent girls and young women. Jennyfer provides its customers with a very wide range of extremely stylish products at the lowest prices on the market. The collections offered by Jennyfer boutiques are continually being renewed in order to keep up with trends and the expectations of its clientele.
In order to fulfill customers' expectations and be able to ensure its stores are fully supplied, Jennyfer decided to replace its obsolescent hardware with a new logistics solution offering much higher performance.
Being careful to implement a global solution that could automate and optimize these operations to the maximum extent, Jennyfer consequently oriented itself towards partners specializing in automatic identification who are capable of deploying a global solution very quickly.
Faced with the scope of the project and a very short timeframe, the company defined a few key prerequisites:
• Portable terminal hardware, providing rapid processing of items and full mobility for employees, must be employed
• Technical support required for centralized management and remote management without having a technician working onsite
"We needed to replace our old hardware, which just couldn't keep up with the pace of work. It no longer offered high enough performance levels either in terms of information processing or data transfer to our central system," explained Christophe de Sachy, Jennyfer's Logistics Director. "So we made a full review of our system and decided to change our radio infrastructure. However, we could not allow ourselves to tie up our logistics system, which would have caused problems for sending supplies to our stores. Therefore, the challenge was to switch our whole system over to the new solution in record time," he indicated.
Jennyfer chose to entrust this mission to three industrial partners who are recognized for their expertise in the field of automatic identification: Datalogic Mobile, a world leader in mobile computing solutions, ITS (Intelligent Technical Services), specializing in the integration of traceability solutions, and Ingram Micro DC POS, a wholesaler specializing in identification and traceability.
A broad-ranging project carried out in record time
These partners provided a solution with the Memor™ from Datalogic Mobile. Tests with the Memor™ made a notable difference in logistics operations and gained unanimous support.
The staff, who are mainly women, enjoyed using this terminal because it was very ergonomic and lightweight. Its performance was also nearly flawless. The warehouses switched over to the new system using the Memor™ in less than 2 months, without the slightest delay or technical problem in relation to the declared schedule.
"We required a very lightweight, ergonomic mobile computer that offered high performance. The natural choice was Datalogic Mobile's Memor™," stated Mr. Hicham Allam at ITS. "We were impressed by the fast action and set-up of this new solution," Mr. de Sachy emphasized. "Over a single weekend, we successfully migrated 100% of our applications onto the Memor™ terminals!"
"This responsiveness is the result of a winning partnership between Ingram, Datalogic Mobile and ITS," added Mr. Vincent Naylor, Ingram Micro DC POS's Manager for the South-East Region. "Our added value as a wholesaler lies in our high-performance logistics, which made it possible to deliver products very quickly. Moreover, our proximity to ITS, which is based in Lyons, also worked in our favor both in terms of the responsiveness of the offer made and the solution's deployment. This tripartite structure involving Ingram, Datalogic Mobile and ITS turned out to be a winning combination," he concluded.
In concrete terms, the solution consists of:
• 150 Memor™ terminals that enable operators to ensure quick, easy and efficient preparation of orders so Jennyfer stores can be supplied.
• A Telnet client (VT emulation) installed on the 150 devices that enable supervision and parameterization of the mobile equipment, which is carried out by a software administration console located onsite.
• Thirty or so WiFi access points that offer real time data transfer and make it possible to exchange information directly between the Memor™ units and the central system.
"Reliability, performance, and security were our keywords for taking action in relation to the traceability project," specified Mr Hicham Allam. "The emphasis was mainly placed on response times (real time solution) in order to optimize the picking phases, and thus provide productivity gains. Security was also an important factor for the Jennyfer IT Department. We therefore opted for the WPA2 standard (AES encryption) to enable secure data exchange."
Real productivity gains and satisfied operators
Today, over 85,000 items are processed daily at Jennyfer's logistics site. Eighty percent of order preparation is managed by women, who told us they are very satisfied with this ergonomic, high-performance solution using the Memor™. Since this new solution has been implemented, no hardware breakdowns have been noted, proving the reliability of Datalogic Mobile products. The estimated productivity gain provided by the new solution is 20%.
Customer: Jennyfer
Industry: Retail
Application: Store Management, Picking and Receiving
Country: France
Datalogic Mobile Solution: Retail In-Store
Datalogic Mobile Products: Memor™
Datalogic Mobile Partner: INGRAM MICRO DC POS and ITS
