Mile Hi Companies Cuts Warehouse Picking Costs and Training Time Significantly with Ivanti Wavelink

By leveraging Ivanti Velocity and Ivanti Speakeasy, Mile Hi Companies has generated huge ROI, including an overall credit reduction of 68% and a training time reduction of 66%

Ivanti Wavelink, the supply chain business unit of Ivanti, today announced that Mile Hi Companies is leveraging Ivanti Velocity and Ivanti Speakeasy to modernize the Mile Hi Foods picking process, which has led to increased productivity, lower costs, and improved customer satisfaction. Today, Mile Hi Foods efficiently distributed all food and paper-related products to 337 McDonald’s restaurants in Colorado and surrounding states.

Previously, Mile Hi Foods had been leveraging a picking solution to primarily check digits and quantities in warehouses. However, low SKU count within distribution centers (for example, the cooler at Mile Hi Foods has roughly 40 unique SKUs) often created opportunities for “check digit memorization.” This in turn led to mis-picks, as well as full-order and partial-order line shortages, as a result of selectors readying orders and rapidly confirming check digits and quantities —sometimes up to 10 to 12 locations ahead of beginning the selection process.

To modernize the Mile Hi Foods picking process, the leadership team at Mile Hi Companies decided to move away from check-digit pick confirmations and toward scan confirmations. The team decided to convert the picking process to wrist-mount wearables with a tethered ring scanner. An internet search led the team to a Zebra Technologies video about modernizing all-touch terminal emulation. In turn, Zebra Technologies introduced the Mile Hi team to an Ivanti Wavelink representative, who scheduled a demo of Ivanti Velocity industrial browser console and Speakeasy voice-enablement.

The Mile Hi team proceeded to build out a project with Ivanti Velocity and Speakeasy that encompassed screen captures, identified inclusions and exclusions of screen data, replaced redundant or unnecessary steps, created custom scripts for GS1-compliant barcodes, customized screen designs, configured text-to-speech, and integrated with mobile-device management for ease of the support. In the end, the team was able to pivot the information to act and look much cleaner than it would have in the native green screen.

“With Ivanti Velocity we can have the screen look exactly how we want — no scrolling necessary. We were able to fit everything on the screen plus strip out a lot of ancillary data with no value-add. So, in this state, selectors get their location, their item number, a brief description, and a field to scan the barcode. That's all we needed,” said Brian Evans, Manager of Continuous Improvement, Mile Hi Companies.

By leveraging Ivanti Velocity and Ivanti Speakeasy in conjunction with Power Warehouse WMS and WT 6300 series Android devices, Mile Hi Companies has realized many measurable benefits and significant ROI, including:

• An overall credit reduction of 48%
• 43% cost avoidance compared to ProCat’s Pick Right for a savings of $4,960 per selector
• 66% reduction in training time (from three days to one day)
• Improved customer satisfaction as it relates to order accuracy
• Ease and speed of implementation (no integration required)
• Full flexibility in text-to-speech and speech-to-text functionality
• An enhanced end-user experience

“It’s an honor that Mile Hi Companies selected our Ivanti Wavelink solutions to increase productivity and picking accuracy,” said Brandon Black, senior vice president and general manager, Ivanti Wavelink. “I’m proud that the implementation of our technologies surpassed Mile Hi Companies’ expected ROI and delivered measurable savings in cost and employee training time. We look forward to continuing to help Mile Hi Companies further improve their picking process through the power and simplicity of voice and unlock even more productivity gains through our Velocity solution.”

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About Mile Hi Companies

Mile Hi Foods, Mile Hi Bakery and Mile Hi Specialty Foods are part of Mile Hi Companies, a provider of customized foodservice distribution solutions and high speed baked products to multi unit chain restaurants for over 50 years. Owned and operated by The Taddonio family, and tracing its foodservice roots back as far as 1901, the combined family of companies service over 1400 individual restaurants in 16 states from 5 distribution centers. After four generations of the Taddonio family, that wagon has evolved into three successful companies with a whole fleet of top of the line trucks that delivers more than just fruits and vegetables. The companies include: Mile Hi Foods, Mile Hi Bakery and Mile Hi Warehousing & Logistics. The bakery provides baked goods for more than 1,000 customers coast to coast from its plant in Denver, which underwent a major expansion in 2013. For more information, please visit our website: https://milehicompanies.com/

About Ivanti Wavelink

Ivanti Wavelink is a global leader in supply chain solutions that focus on task worker operational excellence in business-critical environments. Over 25,000 customers have deployed Ivanti Wavelink solutions to accelerate warehouse operations, reduce risks, and increase productivity through intelligent insights and automation. Our market-leading mobile enterprise platform, combined with our innovative mobile and IIoT solutions, can enhance task worker productivity at the edge and drive efficiency and profit to the bottom line. Ivanti Wavelink is part of Ivanti, a global technology company that enables and secures the Everywhere Workplace. Ivanti is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah and has offices all over the world. For more information, visit www.ivanti.com/wavelink and follow @GoIvanti.

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