Founded in 1970, Seattle's Best Coffee supplies coffee blends to coffee houses as well as to some 12,000 wholesale distribution points that serve retail outlets and restaurants. It was acquired in 1998 by AFC Enterprises, which also owns Cinnabon, Church's Chicken, and Popeye's Chicken & Biscuits. In April of this year, AFC sold SBC's North American operations to Seattle-based rival Starbucks. AFC retained coffee shop franchises in Hawaii, U.S. military bases, and overseas locations.

Seattle's Best Coffee buys most of its green coffee beans from farmers and agricultural co-ops in countries near the Equator, where coffee plants grow at elevations above 4,000 feet. The beans are shipped via ocean container to the Port of Seattle, and the company roasts and blends the beans at a facility on nearby Vashon Island.

The finished blends then are transported on pallets to a 110,000 square-foot distribution center in Renton, Wash., near Seattle. There, about 20 employees handle product storage and retrieval in two shifts.

Prior to the sale to Starbucks, the DC received and filled orders for both domestic and international customers. International orders were shipped by ocean. For grocery and retail accounts, Seattle's Best shipped product in palletloads via less-than-truckload (LTL) carrier. For food-service customers. whose orders average between 20 and 30 pounds, the company shipped via United Parcel Service. Orders to be delivered west of the Mississippi River went by UPS ground service while orders for customers located in the eastern half of the country were shipped by three-day air.

That was a lot to keep track of, and as the company's business grew, it became increasingly difficult to keep on top of inventory. "We couldn't locate our product and we often thought we were out of stock," recalls Bill Thompson, SBC's director of global logistics and distribution.

To improve inventory control, Seattle's Best decided to do away with its paper-based system. In January of 2002, the company installed warehouse management system (WMS) software in conjunction with a radio frequency system at its distribution center. For the job, SBC bought the "Warehouse Librarian" Windows-based WMS from Intek Integration Technologies in Bellevue, Wash.

In conjunction with the WMS, it also installed a radio frequency identification system powered by an Intermec wireless network and Model 2425 hand-held scanners. In addition, Seattle's Best had American Systems Integration of San Diego, Calif., integrate Kewill Systems' ClipperShip shipping and carrier management software into the WMS.

Today, all of the products in the coffee vendor's distribution center are bar coded and stored according to their stock-keeping units (SKUs). The WMS and RF systems seamlessly work together to tell warehouse workers where to store and retrieve products.

That spelled the end of order-fulfillment problems, says Thompson. Under the old paper-based system, the warehouse had a 94-percent fill rate for orders. Thanks to the new, integrated WMS and RFID systems, the facility now boasts a 99.5-percent fill rate. That benefits both shipper and customer, Thompson notes. "We're able to serve more customers with excellent accuracy, while at the same time lowering our overall cost of distribution," he says.