ant Technologies, a leader in the Russian market of supply chain management and optimization solutions, announced today the launch of a project for comprehensive automation of the new warehouses of a national scale logistics operator – the Russian Logistic Service (RLS) Group of Companies.

RLS, headquartered in Moscow, has its own network of regional companies in 20 cities and towns of Russia and Kazakhstan providing a full range of logistic services in the whole territory of Russia including among else road, rail, air, sea freight transportation and consolidated shipments, as well as freight handling and storage at the eleven company warehouses located throughout Russia. RLS’ current strategy is to build 20 large warehouse complexes throughout Russia.

At the first stage of this large-scale project, ant Technologies will carry out comprehensive automation of five A-class warehouses of RLS in Khabarovsk, Samara, the Moscow Region, Yekaterinburg, and Saint-Petersburg, which are set for commissioning in 2007. The total capacity of the warehouses to be opened is 140,000 pallet locations.

The Logistic Vision Suite – Warehouse Vision system by Mantis International, a European vendor, was selected as the platform for the information solution. When selecting the system the customer took into account key advantages such as broad functional capabilities meeting the most up-to-date requirements of the logistics market, flexibility of the system allowing quick adaptation to customer requirements from different market segments, possibility of extending system’s functionality through subsequent introduction of additional modules of the Logistic Vision Suite and short implementation period. When holding the tender, RLS invited a number of international vendors; the tender resulted in selection of ant Technologies as the project contractor because the company managed to offer a flexible and full-scale comprehensive solution with possibilities for further scaling. The selection of ant Technologies was due to its having a substantial experience in the introduction of systems at commercial logistics enterprises and a sufficient amount of resources for the project's implementation at short notice.

"At present our company is challenging itself to expand its presence in the Russian commercial logistics market by creation of a national warehousing network throughout Russia. The total investment at the first stage of the warehouse complex network development project is around 20M dollars," Kiryll Yurievich Vlasov, President of the Russian Logistic Service, points out. "To ensure high quality of services provided at our warehouses we need a sophisticated information system capable of ensuring quick return on investments and of developing along with our business. Therefore we opted for the proposal of ant Technologies which managed to develop a comprehensive warehouse automation solution, not only fully meeting the present day needs of the 3PL-market, but also providing extensive possibilities for further automation of the entire range of our logistic services."

In the context of the project, ant Technologies plans to introduce at each warehouse a basic warehouse management system - Warehouse Vision (250 users) and a number of additional modules – a billing system, order dispatch scheduler, as well as a module for configuring integration with external ERP-systems of the operator's customers which will enable efficient organization of workflow processes. Furthermore, it is planned to expand the functionality of the solution with such additional management modules as a visual warehouse manager and resource supervisor – sophisticated warehouse activity visualization tools enabling real-time warehouse operation monitoring. At the Moscow Head Office of the company the management reporting module will be configured which will enable efficient centralized management of the warehouse complex network.

The project also provides for furnishing the warehouses with state-of-the art automatic identification equipment. The total amount of supplies for the first five warehouses is 36 wireless access points, 174 data collection terminals by Symbol Technologies as well as 22 industrial label printers by Zebra. The equipment of these manufacturers is approved by RLS as the automation standard not only for the existing but also for future warehouses of the company. Under the contract ant Technologies' specialists will provide technical support for all the software and equipment to be purchased. The first stage of the project is planned for completion in the late summer of 2007.

About the Russian Logistic Service

The Russian Logistic Service Group of Companies was established in 1996. The RLS Group has its own network of regional companies in 20 cities and towns of Russia and Kazakhstan with the Head Office in Moscow and provides a full range of logistic services in the territory of the Russian Federation. The services include road, rail, air, and sea freight transportation, consolidated shipments, as well as freight handling and storage at the eleven warehouses of the company located in Moscow, Saint-Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Krasnodar, Samara, Vladivostok and Khabarovsk. The RLS Group of Companies has its own motor pool and insurance company.