D’ieteren has a 44,000 square meter warehouse from which they supply around 300 Belgian dealers and house around 100,000 SKUs (stock keeping units), so that customers never have to wait long for the necessary parts. Orders are often delivered within 24 hours. Large and strategically located dealers receive their orders placed before ten o’clock in the morning even within a few hours.
New software requires new scanner
Because the underlying backend system was very outdated, D’Ieteren decided to implement Microsoft Dynamics. However, the old scanners were not compatible with that system. “To be able to work with Microsoft, for example, we needed an app that runs on Android. In addition, we wanted to scan much more. The old scanners were not designed for that,” says Filip De Wit. “Incorporating more scanning moments in combination with well-performing scanners should support the process even better.”
D’Ieteren had previously purchased scanners and printers through Dalosy, so they asked Dalosy again to make a proposal.
“A 'request for proposal' (RFP) was sent to a dozen suppliers. Six of them were allowed to present their vision. We gave them all a fair chance, but in the end we felt best with Dalosy. The fact that we had already worked together was, of course, a welcome bonus.”
Filip De Wit, Logistics IT support-manager, at D’Ieteren
Sophisticated combination of technologies
Dalosy proposed various scanners to D’Ieteren, depending on the application. For most scanners, the choice fell on Zebra’s robust TC8000 terminals. D’Ieteren also uses Coppernic’s C-One with RFID reader to read the tags of order picking containers. Furthermore, the company has some ‘dumb’ scanners that convert barcodes into text. For the sorting islands, table scanners were installed to read the QR codes that are now used there. To ensure the continuity of the scanning process, the number of Wi-Fi stations in the warehouse was increased from 20 to more than 80. With this, the warehouse now has an optimal Wi-Fi coverage.
The new way of working also required many more portable printers. These make it possible to print labels immediately at the right place in the process. D’Ieteren also entrusted Dalosy with the supply, configuration and subsequent management of the new WiFi network and the supply of the best ‘on spot printers’ for the inbound and outbound process.
When the software project was delayed, D’Ieteren and Dalosy decided to start working on the new hardware. “Our old scanners were in urgent need of replacement. So we asked Dalosy to link the new hardware to the old software first. An extra challenge was that the new Wi-Fi network was not yet in place. The entire transition phase was quite tough, but thanks to Dalosy’s expertise we managed to get through it”, Filip De Wit recalls.
