J&B Cold Storage has acquired the Priya warehouse-management system from Motek, as part of a plan to standardize on that brand of software throughout the company this year. Based in St. Michael, Minn., J&B is a third-party logistics provider of public refrigerated warehousing and cold storage. It offers freezer warehouse space to food wholesalers, processors, manufacturers, distributors and brokers. According to the company, the Priya software has led to dramatic improvements in inventory management, productivity and business capacity. Among J&B's challenges is the need to receive product from customers with little or no prior notice. That makes it tough to track and manage inventory and invoices, said IT director Bill Dettman. "In fact, the weekend of taking Priya live, we received an unexpected influx of orders from our largest customer," he said. Without the new software, he added, the company might have had to turn away trucks and business. Priya gives J&B the ability to add or modify an order up to the time a truck leaves the facility, ensuring that vehicles travel with full loads. Privately held J&B has annual sales in the neighborhood of $400m. Its facilities include 2m cubic feet of cold storage and a 125,000-square-foot warehouse controlled by radio-frequency technology. Distribution covers 11 Midwestern states.
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