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Bay Networks Looks to Neopost/ASAM

Once the new Bay Networks shipping operation model was completed, the company turned to Neopost/ASAM, a Hayward, Calif.-based developer of automated shipping and mailing software systems.

Neopost/ASAM already was a key player in Bay Networks’ shipping operation. In 1990, they provided the company with six shipping systems--each manned by a single operator--for electronic manifesting and for consolidating different carriers through a single system and interface. The Neopost/ASAM shipping systems were also integrated with Bay Networks’ manufacturing management system at that time, ASK®MANMAN®, and a picking and allocations module developed by CORE Technology Group.

Although the above shipping system was fully integrated with Bay Networks’ host system, there were still a lot of manual steps in scanning barcodes, weighing parcels and applying address labels.

“They asked us if it was possible to provide a shipping system environment that was capable of automatically weighing, rating, manifesting, label printing and applying at a rate of up to 30 boxes per minute,” said Spyros Camateros, director of research and development at Neopost/ASAM. “A challenge indeed, but we knew we could make it happen.”

According to Camateros, some of the inherent challenges that Neopost /ASAM faced included augmenting the current shipping manifest system with an automated manifesting mode that could process a package every two seconds. Also required was the ability of the shipping manifest systems to communicate in “real time” with Bay Networks’ new warehouse management system, developed by Catalyst International, and to communicate with Bay Networks’ new host business computer system, the SAP™ R/3®.

At Bay Networks, the SAP R/3 system keeps track of financial, manufacturing and order information. It also tracks inventory of finished goods within the distribution center. The Catalyst warehouse management system, which is linked to the SAP R/3 system, controls Bay Networks’ receiving, warehousing and order-picking operations. Catalyst maintains inventory records that list a given product’s quantity as well as its physical location within the warehouse.

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