Miles Technologies Featured in VSR Magazine

SMB Warehouses Move Beyond Barebones Tech

The O’Brien Brass Company, a Twinsburg, Ohio-based distributor of brass products for the automotive and heavy-duty industrial markets, recently engaged solutions provider Miles Technologies, Lake Zurich, Ill., to configure a WMS application that would address a spate of inventory management issues. Its inventory control system was based on static locations by SKU, meaning that any alterations to the sales and inventory mix led to inefficient use of physical warehouse space. Because pickers had no access to real-time data, product frequently remained untouched in storage despite its availability for use in filling orders. Picking accuracy was not adequate as a result of being manually directed, with the static location system sparking additional errors when items with similar SKU numbers and a nearly identical appearance were placed next to each other in the warehouse.

Miles Technologies specified for O’Brien Brass its INVision warehouse management software, delivered via the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, along with Motorola MC3090 mobile computers. Offering the client the option of utilizing INVision in SaaS fashion rather than in an installed mode, thereby avoiding the large upfront investment associated with most WMS installs, helped to seal the deal, notes Miles Technologies President Tom Beusch... (read more)