Manhattan & Semir win 'Best IT Project' Chinese award

This is the third year in succession that Manhattan has been a co-recipient of this prestigious award, having won the award previously for successful projects at leading Chinese pharmaceuticals distributor Sinopharm (2011) and pre-eminent Chinese 3PL operator Tingtong Logistics (2010).

The awards event is an opportunity to shine a spotlight on some of the most successful deployments of innovative technology in China and illustrate new ways in which the country’s supply chain industry is evolving. The 2012 awards event, which was hosted at the Shangri-La hotel in Wuhan, China, attracted nearly 1,000 participants.

The recent Manhattan Associates project at Semir was singled out for the way in which the Manhattan technology has helped Semir optimize its distribution infrastructure and given the leading Chinese apparel brand a competitive edge using a supply chain systems capability that effectively supports its multi-channel business operations.

The Semir Group, founded in 1996, manufactures a range of apparel clothing and childrenswear and sells its merchandise via 7,500 sales outlets trading under the Semir and Balabala labels and via a strong online offering. Given the increasingly short lead times that exist within the casual apparel industry, the increasingly discerning nature of customers, the complexity of SKUs that exists within Semir’s operations and a need to streamline its overall distribution function, Semir needed an advanced supply chain systems platform to replace the manual approach it had relied on previously.

“More specifically, Semir needed better inventory accuracy, improved productivity levels, greater visibility of data across its distribution operation and a systems platform that could support business growth.

Having selected Manhattan’s Warehouse Management solution, Semir is already reaping the rewards of its investment in the Manhattan technology and its subsequent deployment at its 325,000 square foot distribution center (DC) in Shanghai. Mr. Zhang Zhenlin, logistics director at Semir commented, “With Manhattan’s system, we now have a degree of agility in our supply chain that we could not have hoped to achieve previously.

“We are able to effectively manage our multi-channel operations and can react very quickly to changing demand patterns. The Manhattan WMS also allows us to closely monitor vendor compliance, has given us huge improvements in inventory accuracy and optimized the whole order fulfilment process which means higher customer satisfaction levels.”

Mr. Zhenlin continued, “Within the DC itself, we have seen picking efficiency improve by 60 percent, labor costs cut by 40 percent, space utilization improve by 30 percent, and we’ve been able to accelerate goods flows meaning we are now able to process 350,000 individual pieces in a 7 hour order preparation window.”