Q3 Technologies developed an exemplary solution for Logistics and Warehouse Management System that deals with the flow of retail goods from suppliers to a warehouse, management of items within the warehouse and flow of items from the warehouse to the stores/shops.

Q3's global sourcing model gives the maximum benefit to customers in terms of cost savings, improved quality, access to highly talented professionals, flexibility of operations and reduced time to market.

Company Profile

The client is leader in software design and is able to provide solutions to complex enterprise-level organizations; and also ensures knowledge of technologies, timeliness of interventions, sustainability of investments, and safeguarding of existing software.

Business Situation

Client requires a solution which can handle the following situations:

• Receiving and stocking items from suppliers.
• Receiving item orders from associated shops.
• Assigning quantity of items to shops.
• Researching items in the warehouse facilities.
• Preparing items for the delivery.
• Delivering items to shops/stores.
• Creating reports pertaining to all warehouse activities.

The Logistics and Warehouse Management System is a Web 2.0 application built using the Java/J2EE platform that deals with the flow of retail goods from suppliers to a warehouse, management of items within the warehouse and flow of items from the warehouse to the stores/shops. Q3 Technologies' experts and technical managers immediately understood the requirements and constituted a dedicated team of software architects, designers, developers, and integrators. Q3 Technologies developed an exemplary solution by focusing on following elements of software development:

• All aspects related to stocking and delivery of goods within the warehouse:
• Warehouse (MAGAZZINO) is organised into lanes (CORSIE) that has shelving where items are stored usually on both sides. Each shelving is then divided in columns (COLONNE) and floors (PIANI). So a product can be stored providing the Lane / Column / Floor information.
• A warehouse can only dispatch the goods which are in its picking section. "Picking" is the only location of each article from where the article can actually be dispatched from the warehouse and sent.
• System can generate report which can provide information regarding the articles available in picking section in various warehouses.
• System takes care of receiving item orders from associated shops and deciding the quantity to assign them and also decides which warehouse should dispatch them.
• System keeps track of each every item moved to or from the warehouse.
• System takes care of carriers and containers data, which are used to move goods within warehouse and store.
• System keeps track of the goods that shops have returned back to the dispatched warehouse because goods delivered were defective.
• In case of unavailability of items in warehouse, system provides the information of the other warehouse from where good can be dispatched.
• System generates an anomaly if any warehouse was not able to completely deliver the order to the shop. In this case, system will carry whole information, such as warehouse not able to deliver, reason behind it, and also the system will check availability of undelivered goods in some other warehouse.
• Real measures of each product are needed in order to correctly stock articles inside the warehouse facilities. People who work in the warehouses have to verify the measures of each product. System gives information about the measures that had been verified by the warehouse workers.

The Logistics and Warehouse Management System uses n-tier Java/J2EE architecture, which is highly scalable, modular, and easy to maintain. The architectural design diagram is as follows:

Technologies

• Java (JDK 1.5)/J2EE
• Spring Framework
• IBatis ORM Framework
• Jasper Reports
• AJAX
• WebSphere Application Server (WAS)
• Oracle 10g
• ExtJS
• Eclipse IDE
• JUnit
• CVS

Benefits

• Real measures of availability of items.
• System can track if an item was not delivered and the reasons behind it.
• Avails reporting data for different perspective on the basis of time.
• Provides access to information from warehouses.