Rawlings Sporting Goods is the official ball supplier to Major League Baseball® and is a leading marketer and manufacturer of baseball equipment and other sporting goods. Since the company’s inception in 1887, Rawlings’ mission has always been centered on enabling participation by developing and producing innovative, high-performance sports equipment and protective apparel for the professional, amateur, and entry-level player. With its wide range of baseball, basketball, and football game-related product lines, Rawlings is present almost everywhere team sports are played.
Rawlings had been using manual, paper-based processes to manage its warehouse inventory. These time-consuming processes led to poor inventory accuracy, a large volume of backorders, and a high cost of production.
Perhaps the biggest challenge, however, was that the paper-based processes in the warehouse caused data flow to the ERP to be incredibly slow. Rawlings knew that to improve operations, it needed a mobile solution in the warehouse.
To leverage the power of its enterprise software investments, Rawlings integrated Cloud Inventory with Oracle JD Edwards World and the Oracle JD Edwards Warehouse Management System (WMS). The company chose Cloud Inventory because its mobile-first platform would give warehouse staff access to real-time connectivity between the ERP system and the warehouse floor.
After seeing successful results at the original warehouse, Rawlings decided to investigate whether Cloud Inventory could improve supply chain processes at other company warehouses. Because the Oracle JD Edwards infrastructure was in place across Rawlings’ operations, it was easy to expand the deployment of Cloud Inventory mobile applications.
One of Rawlings’ most important warehouse performance metrics is its cost-per-carton. Since integrating Cloud Inventory with Oracle JD Edwards WMS, Rawlings has reduced its cost-per-carton by 47%. The company’s cost-per-carton has decreased for four consecutive years, showing how Cloud Inventory provides its users with sustainable benefits.
As inventory accuracy has improved, Rawlings has reduced the value of its inventory write-downs by 50%, and backorders have reduced by more than 75%.
“Since implementing Cloud Inventory, we’ve been able to go from being a good performer to a top performer,” said Mike Campbell, Senior Director of Global Logistics. “I’ve received e-mails from customers stating we’re ‘the best’ at delivering sporting goods."