Two new giant servers will collect live point-of-sale data from 1,000 supermarkets across the country and forecast precise store replenishment requirements. The system is part of Woolworths' Project Refresh, which the retail giant hopes will save AU$4 billion by 2007.
"This deployment marks a new era in Woolworths' technology implementation as we move to a real time system for our supermarket ordering system," said Geoff Marler, infrastructure services manager, Woolworths.
"The centralised system will forecast and initiate appropriate stock replenishment, ending the need for manual orders, reducing the level of surplus stock in the warehouses and supermarkets, and improving the accuracy of stock allocations," said Marler. "It will streamline communication from the supermarket to the warehouse and make a substantial cost saving to our business."
Woolworths will deploy Hewlett Packard's Superdome servers, which come with PA8700+ processors and 256 Gb of memory, in a staged implementation during 2003. A two Tb Oracle Version 8 database on one of the Superdome's will maintain the store inventory and forecasting data.
