Aldes Selects Manhattan Associates
Aldes, a specialist in the development and manufacturing of air quality improvement systems for domestic and commercial buildings, has selected Manhattan Associates' Warehouse Management for Open Systems and Performance Management solutions. The solutions which are already being implemented at an existing site at Venissieux in South-East France, will also be deployed at a future Aldes central warehouse currently under construction. This further warehouse will be located in Mions, a town close to Venissieux in the Rhone-Alpes region. Manhattan Associates' solutions will be integrated with the core ERP transaction modules of Aldes' existing enterprise system partner SAP, as well as be interfaced with voice recognition technology from Vocollect.
Aldes was a French family business founded in 1925, expanding internationally from the 1970s through the opening of multiple subsidiaries around the world, and via several acquisitions. The Aldes group today comprises 14 subsidiaries. In 2006, Aldes recorded a turnover of almost EUR 180m, employing 1120 people including 750 in France. The company handles more than 150,000 customer orders each year.
In collaboration with Segula Conseil Industriel, a branch of Segula Technologies, one of France's principal engineering and consulting companies, Aldes went through a structured selection process, exploring particularly the functionality range / depth and technology characteristics of each available solution. At the end of September 2006, Aldes selected Manhattan Associates' Warehouse Management for Open Systems and Performance Management solutions.
The solutions are currently being implemented at Aldes' existing site located in Venissieux. As part of this first implementation, which will be completed in July 2007, Aldes is setting up a pilot operation on a specific area of this site to help prepare for a deployment of the solution at Mions once the warehouse there has been built. The configuration of Manhattan Associates' solutions will already be done, and staff will already be trained, facilitating start-up for the Mions facility, which will become operational in the fourth quarter of 2007.
"Manhattan Associates' solutions gave us a very close match against almost all of the search criteria we applied in the selection process," underlines Loic D'Aubarede, supply chain director at Aldes. "Segula Conseil Industriel really helped us gain an independent assessment of the real value of Manhattan Associates' solutions, and so we have the two organisations to thank for equipping our logistics function with a supply chain platform that we believe will give us an edge and that will evolve with us as our business expands."