Aldes Accelerates Growth with Manhattan Associates

Leading supply chain solutions provider, Manhattan Associates, Inc. (NASDAQ: MANH), today announced that Aldes, the 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 Vénissieux in South-East France, will also be deployed at a future Aldes central warehouse currently under construction. This further warehouse will be an 18,600m² facility located in Mions, a town close to Vénissieux in the Rhône-Alpes region. Manhattan Associates’ solutions will be integrated with and complement 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. This expansion strategy served to strengthen its overall product offering as well as its global footprint. The Aldes group today comprises 14 subsidiaries and boasts an extensive distribution network. In 2006, Aldes recorded a turnover of almost €180m, employing 1120 people including 750 in France. The company handles more than 150,000 customer orders each year. Aldes had seen demand for its products accelerate, thanks to the quality of the company’s offering, the diversity of proposed systems and components in its pipeline, and also because air quality and energy savings standards were harmonising around the world in line with developments in building construction quality. Aldes recognised several years ago the constraints of its physical distribution facilities and logistics support systems to cope with this continued growth. The company consequently decided in 2006 to completely redesign its logistics infrastructure, with the project’s centrepiece being the construction of a new 18,600m2 central warehouse at Mions that would be supported by a new warehouse management solution. The new warehouse management solution would in turn be integrated to Aldes’ SAP ERP system to provide the company with the complementary ERP / Supply Chain platform it required. Aldes’ company objectives were focused on being able to profitably manage the growth of the business, and so the identification of productivity improvements, the optimisation of the order fulfilment process, and the adoption of a scalable solution that would help the group to do these things over the long term were paramount. In collaboration with Segula Conseil Industriel, a branch of Segula Technologies, one of France’s principal engineering and consulting companies, Aldes went through a highly 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 Vénissieux. 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 successful 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 a quicker and smoother 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 Loïc 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.” Henri Seroux, director of Manhattan Associates France, comments, "We are very pleased to be supporting Aldes as its business grows. We are confident that Manhattan Associates’ solutions will help Aldes to optimise its supply chain both in the immediate future as it prepares to open up its new site at Mions, and in the longer term as it pursues its ambitious growth plans.” About Aldes Group Aldes is a French family-owned business, founded in 1925, that designs, manufactures and markets systems for improving air quality in domestic and commercial premises. The group’s offerings cover five specific areas: ventilation, centralised vacuum cleaning systems, air diffusion and distribution, fire protection and acoustics. With an international presence across the five continents, Aldes is the global leader in ventilation and interior air quality, and the European leader in centralised vacuum cleaning systems. For more information: www.aldes.com About Manhattan Associates, Inc. Manhattan Associates® is a leading supply chain solutions provider. The company’s supply chain planning, supply chain execution, business intelligence and business process platform capabilities enable its more than 1,200 customers worldwide to enhance profitability, performance and competitive advantage. For more information, please visit www.manh.com.