Tier 1 retailer Nisa moves on to a single environment
Company Biography
1977
Dudley B Ramsden (former chairman) and Peter Garvin from Nisa (Northern Independent
Supermarkets Association) with 30 retailers and a total turnover of £20 million, running the
business for the next 11 years from a meeting room at The Crown Hotel, Bawtry and their
respective company offices.
1984
Nisa opens its first central distribution depot 10,000 sq ft based in Milton Keynes.
1987
Wholesale division -
1990
2000
Scunthorpe Central Office opened by HRH Princess Anne along with grocery central warehouse
and distribution facility.
National Distribution Centre for Fresh and Frozen is opened in Stoke-on-Trent.
2002
Premier Service six-day-a-week delivery on temperature-controlled products.
2004
Second fresh and frozen National Distribution Centre opens in Harlow, Essex.
2005
New 635,000 sq ft ambient distribution warehouse opens at Foxhills Industrial Park in
Scunthorpe, amalgamating Nisasite.
p formed and merges with the retail division to become Nisa-
Nisa & WCS Relationship
1995
First WCS Install at Scunthorpe 1.4?
2002
Early adopters of new Voice Picking technology in partnership with VoiteQ and WCS
2003
Stoke Migration from Locater System to WCS SCM v1.5.2
2004
Harlow new install to WCS SCM v.1.5.2
2005
Upgrade Scunthorpe SCM1.7 to SCM1.8
Oct 2010
First Site on 1.9.2 at Harlow
Jan 2011
New Chill Depot at Livingston
May 2011
New Ambient depot at Livingston
Aug 2011
Stoke Upgrade 1.5 to 1.9.2 on same database
Jan 2012
Scunthorpe Upgrade 1.8 to 1.9.2 on shared database
2012/13
Strategic Improvements the full Nisa Estate: Voice Fork; Voice Loading; Complex Shroud picking
for Bananas and Bread; Container Specific Picking.
Facts & Figures
Following the 2012 AGM in September the company officially changed its name from NisaLimited to Nisa Retail Limited.
£1.43 billion turnover at the end of financial year 2013
1,156 shareholders [Jul 2013] operating over 4,000 stores
960 Nisa symbol stores and 70 Loco stores [Jul 2013]
280 members of staff employed at the Member Support Centre, Scunthorpe.
Recruited 234 members from April 2012 to April 2013, representing a 9.4% year-on-year increas
record figures
£3 million paid to members in the form of a surplus distribution with a further £0.6milion paid in dividend
payments [2013]
Award Wins
Winners of the Best Symbol Retailer 2010, 2011 and 2012 at the CTP Awards
Winners of the Symbol Retailer of the Year at the Grocer Gold Awards 2012
Winner of the Forecourt Trader of the Year for Range and Availability at the 2012 Forecourt Trader Awards
Loco was winner of the Best Shopper Experience award at the 2013 CTP Awards
Trading & Logistics
12,000 product lines available with over 400 promotions every three week period
Over 108 million cases distributed through central distribution
4 depots in Scunthorpe, Stoke, Harlow and Livingston
Successful own label Heritage range with 50 new product launches in the last year
Project Background
In 1997 Nisa made the decision to move to WCS (then known as AquiTec) to provide their ambient warehouse
software solution running on IBM iSeries hardware. The combination of rich functionally available in the WCS
warehouse software and the reliable performance provided by the IBM iSeries machines allowed Nisa to provide a
reliable and rugged solution to their critical 24/7 ambient warehousing operation.
As confidence in the solution grew Nisa made the decision to replace the existing chill and national freeze systems
at Stoke and Harlow with the same winning combination.
use and in 2005 moved to a brand
new purpose built 635,000 sq ft facility, taking the opportunity to both upgraded the Scunthorpe WCS warehouse
software, and replace the IBM hardware.
Reason to Change
In 2009 Nisa started to look at moving to a single 3PL warehouse operation at Scunthorpe, Harlow and Stoke from
their current two providers, at the same time they wanted to move from 3 live IBM machines onto a single machine
running a single WCS warehouse software and database. This would help standardise the operation at different
sites, provide a system version running on a single database providing a corporate view of data across the whole
Nisa operation, it would also allow the hardware maintenance costs to be reduced with all sites running on a single
IBM Series P6 570 and a Series P6 570 mirror.
Risks
allowed them to take this critical decision on a 24/7 mission critical area of the Nisa business responsible for the
receipt, picking and despatch with over two million cases of tri-temperature product to its members nationwide.
Outcome
With the new 3PL operator chosen (DHL) the project took three years to move to a single 3PL operation at all sites,
upgrade the WCS warehouse software to version 1.9.2 and finally migrate all sites onto the new single IBM Series
P6 570 machine portioned for live, test and development with live mirrored onto the Series P6 570. During the
project Nisa also implemented a new chill/ambient warehouse site at Livingstone to improve the northern
transportation logistics.
SITE
Scunthorpe
Livingston
Stoke
Harlow
SQ FOOTAGE
635,000
195,000
165,000
80,000
TYPE
Ambient
Ambient &Chill
Chill & Freeze
Chill
AVG-CASES/DAY
300,000
30,000
70,000
40,000
• Worldwide Chain Store Systems (WCS) were the original pioneer of WMS systems in 1969 and since then they
understanding of the grocery supply chain is unprecedented and their reputation for running, managing and
optimising large grocery distribution centres is well known and respected throughout the industry.
• WCS have supported Nisa since the Scunthorpe facility first went live in 1995, and have demonstrated over the
last 19 years that WCS is a company that Nisa can trust to implement and support the high level of
functionality needed to the run the business cost effectively, at the lowest possible risk.
• 20 Years Next Year!
• Integrate all existing separate instances of SCM/400 on different databases and different SCM versions (1.8
Scunthorpe and 1.5 Chill depots) onto one single machine, single environment and up to the latest SCM version
1.9.2.
• The standardisation of global data and changes to end of day to support running the SCM/400 application in a
new single environment.
• Phase out of all Middleware Voice solutions and the implementation of the SCM/400 base Voice Direct tasks
across all sites.
• A requirement for Paragon interface changes and modifications to the Paragon Application to support the new
single environment to support transhipment movements across the integrated Nisa/DHL Network.
• Changes to SCM/400 base asset management functionality to support the DHL cage and pallet tracking
requirements.
•
easier to support. Any existing bespoke deemed advantageous to other WCS clients to be incorporated into the
SCM/400 base product.
Risk Management
Managing risk avoids many pitfalls: Risk management is a key to success; from the kick off and then throughout
the project having a Risk Workshop and then regular risk reviews during and before each major milestone allowed
all involved to focus on areas of concern.
Functional Detail
Increased time and effort in getting the Functional detail exactly correct is worth the time, to avoid Issues further
down stream with User acceptance.
Flexibility
During the Project new unplanned requirements meant re-planning timelines to cater for: a new Chill and Ambient
facility at Livingston, and the introduction of banana and bread picking regimes across all three Chill depots.
Effective Testing
QA testing, Nisa IT testing and DHL UAT for all changes, DHL regression testing, Nisa IT upgrade and cutover
testing gave the whole team confidence meant minimal surprises during the Cutover and a smooth
implementation.
Dress Rehearsals
For extra confidence in the Cutover Process we achieved three successful Dress Rehearsals. The methods taken
were to follow the steps in the actual Cutover plan for all of the critical tasks. We took live data from the
Scunthorpe System, upgraded and merged it with the existing Nisa estate on our Pre-Production environment.
This data was then reStoke and Harlow then picked against the merged data to ensure that the existing data is not affected.
Functional Areas on the Nisa and WCS Solution
Retek
Interfaces IN
Retek
Interface
Results OUT
SCM V1.9.2
WAREHOUSE
MODULE
RF
MODULE
STORE ORDER
MODULE
LABOUR
MODULE
CUBISCAN
DATA IN
Receiving
Slotting
Logic
Putaway
BONDED
Stock
control
Voice PI
(Near future)
Pallet
Moves
Replenishment
Assignment
Task
Creation
Engineered
Labour
Standards
PARAGON
Route
Planning
Voice Pick PBL & Selection Direct
Socket
Interleaving
Voice Loading
Voice Forks
Future Epod
Interface
(Near Future)
TRANSHIPMENT
Inc. OUTBASES
(Near Future)
Asset
Tracking