Kopenhagen Fur has an advanced warehouse in China
Kopenhagen Fur bets on the Chinese market. To get closer to its customers, Copenhagen Fur has decided to set up a forward stock of skins in Hong Kong. World market prices for skins are set in Denmark. In just 4 days in February this year, 4.3 million mink skins were traded and a turnover of no less than 1.8 billion DKK. When skins are traded, buyers don't necessarily take their goods with them. They may be saved as an investment and sold at a convenient time, or used later. Therefore, Copenhagen Fur offers a warehouse functionality. The company stores skins and delivers the purchased skins when customers want to purchase. The majority of all skins are sold to Asia.
Capacity problem resulted in new opportunities
In Denmark, Kopenhagen Furs’ warehouse is now too small to handle the desired capacity. The choice was therefore between expanding the warehouse in Denmark or establishing an advance warehouse in Hong Kong. By establishing a new warehouse, boxes of skins can be delivered quickly to customers, immediately after payment. In addition, it will be cheaper in the future due to larger shipments to the Hong Kong warehouse. In the longer term, it is expected that the goods will be transported by boat. Then the transport will be even more advantageous. The choice was easy, but what about the technology and what about local cooperation in China?
Can WMS technology simply be reused in China?
The desired WMS functionality is almost the same in Hong Kong and Denmark. Therefore, it was obvious to try to use the same WMS system. The question was, could you run on the same server in Denmark and manage the warehouse in Hong Kong? If this were not possible, the economic consequences could be very significant. Tecsys has just implemented Tecsys WMS in Hong Kong and just connected the Danish WMS server through the Internet to the warehouse in China. The solution works flawlessly and there are no noticeable delays in response times from the barcode terminals.
Local labour
When you have to collaborate with a foreign culture and at the same time use new technology, the question is always whether the collaboration will go well? The solution was to send the future head of the warehouse to Denmark. In just 10 minutes, he was working with the WMS solution. This despite the fact that all on-screen menus at the time were in Danish. It was a positive experience in every way.
Good economy with Tecsys WMS
The logistics work thanks to a long-standing cooperation between Tecsys and Kopenhagen Fur. People, technology and economy are now united for the benefit of Danish exports, and for the many customers who buy skins in Asia. The solution was to reuse Tecsys WMS with a connection to Hong Kong.
“I am very happy with our decision. We are recycling our investment, but the most important thing is that all features are proven. We didn’t have to go through a costly rebuild. The warehouse can run from day one.” Peter Skov Hansen, IT manager at Kopenhagen Fur.
Intermec CK3
The Intermec CK3 is the handheld terminal with the impressive EX25 scanner, which can read barcodes at both short and very long distances. The terminal software is Windows Mobile and Tecsys Mobile Framework, which provides, among other things, AD validation of the user.
For more information on CK3, contact Michael Pedersen: +45 88 33 57 34 or michael.pedersen@tecsys.com.