Oy Marli Ab

Oy Marli Ab is a leading manufacturer and marketer of fruit-based beverages in the Nordic countries. As the leading manufacturer of non-carbonated beverages in Finland, it has net sales of EUR 48 million and its Turku plant's annual production of drinking juices totals around 90 million liters. The company belongs to the German Eckes-Granini Group, which is Europe's number one in the fruit-based beverages sector through its annual net turnover of EUR 678 million and annual sales of 841 million liters.

Done Logistics is implementing its FidaWare warehouse management and order-picking control system for an automated warehouse and dispatch project underway in Marli's Turku plant. This system will be used to manage reception, labeling, storage, manual order-picking and dispatch operations for both in-house and imported products. 

The system implementation incorporates the FidaWare for Warehousing product family's standard modules for order-picking and warehouse control, tools for planning a graphical storage map and the required reporting and monitoring tools. FidaWare's inventory control module will also replace the control system currently used in the automated warehouse. At the same time, a new user interface component will be added to the module, enhancing the automated warehouse's manageability and users' visual experience. 

The FidaWare system will be upgraded to meet Marli's special requirements and the Turku plant's existing hardware environment will be utilized in its implementation (e.g. for labeling and wireless solutions).

Integrated as part of Marli's supply chain management system, FidaWare will interface with Marli's ERP system, production-related and labeling systems, and a programmable logic control system responsible for device control.

"When our current control and management systems reached their useful lifespan of 15 years, we began to consider the need for a new warehouse management system. It had became evident that risks associated with the systems' reliability were becoming too high due to more frequent faults and declining availability of spare parts, system support and maintenance. Moreover, the systems' obsolete technology made their further development difficult. Following a thorough analysis of various systems, we opted for FidaWare due mainly to the fact that it incorporated a number of built-in functionalities answering our needs and boasted good references by companies representing industries similar to ours. Besides, Done Logistics proved to be a professional and flexible supplier," explains Jari Metsäranta, IT Manager of Marli.

The system's site adoption and trial run will begin in late 2006 and it will be up and running in early 2007.