Wine producer quenches thirst for growth

14 Degrees, the distributor arm of Rathbone Wine Group, has completed a successful implementation of Manhattan’s warehouse and distribution management solution, Manhattan SCALE. The deployment is part of a business transformation project designed to deliver an enhanced service experience for 14 Degrees’s customers and to drive continued business growth.

Within just a few months of the solution’s deployment at its Port Melbourne distribution centre in Victoria, 14 Degrees has reported accelerated goods flows, improved on-shelf availability for customers’ products, a 99.9% inventory accuracy level and a 25% gain in productivity.

Darren Rathbone, director at 14 Degrees, said, “Because of the consumable nature of the products we’re distributing, it’s very important to our winery customers that the location and integrity of their stock is known at all times. Our old system was unable to give us an accurate picture of enterprise inventory at any moment in time. With Manhattan we now have end-to-end visibility of all stock in real time, which means order fulfilment for our customers is faster and more accurate and we can ensure the highest quality of product at every point in the supply chain journey.”

14 Degrees now has a more flexible and streamlined distribution capability for serving wineries including Yering Station, Mount Langi Ghiran and Xanadu. The versatility of the Manhattan solution has enabled 14 Degrees to expand its service capabilities beyond wine to other products requiring temperature-controlled storage and transport.

Rathbone continued, “It was very important to us that the warehouse management solution we deployed was flexible, could handle our high-volume throughput and had the required functionality to seamlessly direct inventory moves within our complex, high-density racking environment. Manhattan spent a lot of time learning about the intricacies of our business and configuring the system to match our precise requirements and those of our customers. The Manhattan team delivered the project on time and ensured everything went smoothly during and post implementation.”

Manhattan SCALE solves supply chain execution challenges for organisations in a whole range of industry sectors, whilst its scalability ensures companies can comfortably handle peak demand periods as well as grow their businesses over time. With 14 Degrees looking at new distribution markets, including pharmaceuticals, the solution’s agility and capacity to support companies operating in multiple industries were central to 14 Degrees’s decision to deploy Manhattan SCALE.

SCALE offers a user-friendly interface, is easy for staff to learn, can be deployed quickly and boasts a high degree of configurability to meet the needs of diverse businesses.