exported Australian bottled table and holds the record for the fastest growing imported wine in the US. CFB is also a key player in the US, Canada, Europe and Asia and ships over 12.5 million cases of wine to more than 50 countries each year. Targeting global distribution management and order fulfilment capability, the new software and platform technology converges back-end supply chain execution with front-end sales. The availability improvements mean Yellow Tail is seen, “on more store shelves, and in more bars, pubs, clubs, hotels and restaurants around the world with every passing week,” McLeod said. “Under our previous system we had several staff members allocating orders to our drivers; they would allocate that stock from a variety of rows, but not necessarily coordinate with each other,” McLeod said. “By having one system distribute all the orders via FIFO [First In, First Out], it greatly reduces the number of [warehouse] rows that are only partially utilised.” The more efficiently the warehouse rows are utilised, the less onerous it is for the company to ensure the functioning of the bottom line. McLeod said that with the bottling line filling 20 rows of 39 to 50 pallets each night, space utilisation is pivotal. Such a solution also helps manage the inventory volume associated with this scale of operation, capable of processing 36,000 bottles an hour and one of the fastest bottling lines in the world. The visibility of inventory across CFB’s two distribution centres has been improved as well as product availability, which in turn is assisting the drive to future growth. “At the click of a button, we can simply enter in either a lot code, i.e. a specific production batch of a product, or we can enter just the SKU,” McLeod said. “We can see exactly how much we have, how much of it is allocated to orders, and we can also see where exactly within our warehouses it is.” In addition, the next production run can be easily ascertained as well as how much of that upcoming run is needed for outgoing orders. Reports that previously took hours to prepare can now simply be refreshed to provide the information. Another benefit of SCALE is that the company is now able to lot track down to the individual pallet, as now every individual pallet has a licence plate. Previously there was no ability to distinguish between the first carton and the last carton of, for example, 30,000 cases of a product. The ability to lot track also helps detect slow-moving stock to prevent obsolescence. “This has been a bit of a boon,” McLeod said. “Previously it was quite difficult to discover the quantities of older stock in the warehouse.”