November 2000

UK-based warehouse systems specialist Microlise is making a major bid for the home delivery market with a comprehensive new modular software/hardware package, which follows the product right through from warehouse or store picking to final delivery to the front door.

The new service, which has been branded supplylane.com, will offer managed logistics on a multimodal, pan-European and worldwide basis; and it will support this with a pay-as-you-go Web-based supply-chain integration service built round a product called i-vision. The system, which is being called Home.Delivery.Expert, is particularly appropriate in its initial form to complex store-picked orders. But Microlise managing director Roy Allum told e.logistics Magazine that larger versions suitable for heavy pick-and-pack were also under development. Home.Delivery.Expert draws on various components from the existing Microlise portfolio, including the Opus warehouse management system and the company's own range of portable and handheld radio-frequency terminals. It augments these with integration features and some new components. It is modular, and can incorporate in-house or proprietary hardware according to user requirements. It could for instance use RFID intelligent tags to track products. In store-based applications it would simply interface with existing stock-keeping systems, although Allum says it would also be possible to provide a version of Opus to manage back-of-store stock. "It could make in-store stock-keeping much more efficient." An innovative feature that proved a real show-stopper at the ECMOD exhibition in November was a pick-to-light trolley. The trolley carries half a dozen or more plastics totes, and coloured lights at the corners of each level tell the picker which tote to use for each item. The object here is to separate orders and keep products in different temperature bands apart. The lights are activated by an on-board barcode scanner. According to Roy Allum, a major supermarket chain is set to trial some elements of the system, and might then introduce it next spring.