Musgrave, Ireland’s largest food wholesaler, is investing over £250,000 sterling in an advanced IT solution for its new food services warehouse at Ballymun, Ireland. The new system – Accord – from BCP Ltd, will give Musgrave all the benefits of a powerful, modern distribution solution, allowing them to maximise efficiency and customer service.

The new purpose built 55,000 square foot warehouse, built alongside Musgrave’s existing Cash & Carry depot at Ballymun, will stock an extensive range of frozen, chilled as well as ambient produce and will service all industrial, institutional and hospitality catering customers in the Dublin area. It will service the Greater Dublin area providing new standards in customer service.

David Smyth, Operations Manager in Foodservices, added: “We are delighted that we have a system that will allow us to be flexible to, and meet, our customer needs in an efficient manner. The wealth of information that is captured by Accord will ensure that we are optimising our most expensive resource, people.”

The investment in IT encompasses the complete Accord Distribution solution and will control all aspects of warehouse operation and management, from purchasing and goods received through stock control and warehouse management to Telesales. The 28-user system will operate over a LAN on ICL / Fujitsu Siemens hardware and has been designed to provide a highly resilient NonStop solution. A Symbol Radio Frequency network will assist in optimising the use of forklift equipment and enable staff to work quicker and smarter on real time information. RF Hand Held terminals will also be used for handling goods received and stock checking while an interface between the RF spread spectrum infrastructure and the LAN will provide instant real time information on stock availability.

With opening planned for January 2001, BCP and Musgrave are currently installing the software on test systems and undertaking extensive trials prior to actual installation to ensure a fast and straightforward implementation.

Eamonn L’Estrange, IT Project Manager at Musgrave, remarks: “This advanced Warehouse Management installation is vital to the success of our new food services initiative and we are happy to have BCP as our partners on this project. BCP is the best of breed food services system provider in Ireland. We have worked with them for a number of years and are confident that they understand our business and needs and that Accord will give us effective control over our new business, allowing us to provide a world class, cost effective service to our customers in this country.”