WHEN fashion label Quiksilver built a national distribution centre, it soon found its paper management system couldn't keep up.

Its Australian headquarters is in the Victorian coastal town of Torquay, 20 minutes past Geelong and not far from surfing destination Bells Beach.

Moving its national distribution centre to the North Geelong transport hub, Quiksilver doubled its size to cope with its range of 75,000 items of surf, skate and snow wear.

Before the move its paper system guided staff who picked cartons off the racks to put them on pallets shipped to shops. The paper picker ticket was printed from its Lawson M3 warehouse management system.

Delays in rolling out the system at the new site forced Quiksilver to fall back to a manual system, which helped staff appreciate how difficult the job was and drove efforts to improvement to the picking system.

"Once we saw the significant difference in how things are working at the new distribution centre in terms of processes and also in the volumes that we were dealing we realised we couldn't go on with existing processes and systems," says Quiksilver IT manager Thomas Zulliger.

"From our previous experience, change management has always proved very difficult but in this case it was one of the easiest parts because after running manually for a while everyone was really keen to do it differently and improve the process."

To speed the process and improve accuracy, Quiksilver integrated Dexion's real-time distribution system and the Lawson.

Pickers use Symbol wireless hand-held PCs with bar code scanners on which they get orders in real time.

Pickers grab items in half the time - reducing to one work shift instead of two - and are accurate in 99.9 per cent of cases, says Quiksilver's national logistics manager, Brett Delaney.

"When you are looking at a wall of board shorts and they are all pink, there is a little bit of guesswork as to whether you've grabbed the right pattern. Also you might think you've grabbed a size 12 when in actual fact in your hand is a size 10," Mr Delaney says.

"The advantage we've got with the system is now you have to actually scan the product's bar code and the scanner will either go 'ding' if you've got it right or 'bong' if you've got it wrong. Under the manual system there was none of that sort of verification.

"The current pick rates would have been unimaginable when using the old processes."

It also improves packing information and customer order receipt procedures.

Mr Delaney says Quiksilver is "the only player in this market" to provide an exact contents label on each carton, making life easier for retailers.

"If a retailer is unloading 10 cartons off the truck and they want to grab hold of the board shorts before the bikinis, it's easy thanks to our carton labelling," he says.

"This is especially useful if the board short rack is a bit bare and they're really keen to get those board shorts before they deal with the bikinis.

"They can look at the paperwork, which tells them which carton to go to, and on the outside of the carton is details of what's inside, right down to the size.

"Our theory there is that if we tell the retailer what's in what carton they can get them on the rack quicker and sell them quicker - so everybody wins."

Next Lessons

Problem: A growing distribution centre made it hard for Quiksilver to accurately pick products from warehouse racks.

Process: Product pickers with wireless bar code scanners can electronically verify their actions.

Possibilities: Quiksilver can now deliver goods faster to retailers, who in turn can get them on the shelves faster thanks to improved carton labelling.