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Illinois Power is a gas and
electric utility company that distributes all the material
required for utility installation and repair work, specializing
in generation, transmission and distribution of electricity
and gas. Illinois Power serves approximately 650,000 customers
over a 15,000 square mile area of Illinois and has net
electric generating capability of more than 4100 megawatts.
Illinois Power Company is a subsidiary of Illinova, an
energy services holding company.
Implementation
Illinois Power Company had several goals in mind while
searching for the right warehouse management system. They
envisioned improved customer service levels, and reduction
in the number of employees needed. Another goal was to
consolidate from 25 small distribution centers to one
main facility. The Illinois Power Material Distribution
Facility went live in December of 1994 with Release 4.0
of the Catalyst WMS along with Oracle as their RDBMS.
In December, 1998 they upgraded to Release 7.0. Since
the warehouse operation was new, the operation was built
around the standard functionality of the Catalyst system
with very few modifications required.
The Decatur Facility
The Decatur facility warehouses material required for
utility installations and repair. Before this facility
went live, they had 25 individual sites operating independently.
Illinois Power has made great strides towards being totally
centralized and nearly all of its distribution is done
out of the Decatur facility. This site is a two shift
operation consisting of 8 hours per shift.
The Decatur site has 105,000 square feet inside the warehouse
with an additional 7 acres of land outside for storage.
They have a 28 foot high bay area with narrow aisles throughout
the entire warehouse. There are a total of 15 radio frequency
terminals within the warehouse which are either hand held
or truck mounted. The facility processes approximately
1800 transactions per day with about 1200 outbound order
lines. They chose an AIX operating system and run on the
IBM RS6000 platform with SNA as the host communication
method.
Some inventory at this facility is on consignment from
the vendor which helps hold down the cost of inventory
since the vendor actually owns the product until it is
used by Illinois Power. Once the product is used, then
payment is made to the vendor. When searching for a product,
the Catalyst WMS checks the Illinois Power stock first,
and then moves on to the vendor stock.
Product Movement
Illinois Power uses forklifts, turret trucks and walkies
that are easy to manipulate through the narrow aisles
of the warehouse. Fork trucks and a crane are used to
manipulate product in the outside locations. They are
unique in their product handling methods in that they
deal with all eaches rather than the typical pallet allotment.
The eaches are comprised of many odd shaped items such
as cable and pipe which have unique units of measure such
as pounds and feet.
Benefits
Since the implementation of the Catalyst system they were
able to reduce the number of employees needed from 74
down to 52. It has also allowed them to centralize their
distribution function from 25 individual sites to one
large center. These along with a reduction in the amount
of extra inventory costs, process costs, and a greater
efficiency with a paperless system have given Illinois
Power a huge savings across their bottom line. |
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Adobe
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To properly view the downloadable files
on this page, it is necessary to have a version of Adobe
Acrobat installed onto your computer. If you do not already
have this application, a free version is available for
download above. |
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