West Monroe Partners Releases Enhanced Labor Management System

Chicago, IL – October 2, 2007 – West Monroe Partners, a full-service business and technology consultancy, today announced a new release of its innovative FLEXdls™ labor management system. FLEXdls™ accesses data from existing warehouse management systems to help retail and distribution organizations analyze and improve tasks within their distribution centers.

FLEXdls™ features a new, powerful Microsoft.NET technology platform that enables users to install the product quickly and integrate it efficiently with existing legacy and custom-built warehouse management systems. It also includes a variety of new features—including several patented technologies—that facilitate labor management activities throughout the supply chain, including setting clear and effective performance expectations and measuring and monitoring performance.

“FLEXdls™ already was the most flexible and accurate standalone labor management product in the marketplace,” said George Bishop, West Monroe Partners’ Labor Management practice leader. “By enhancing the technology platform and several of the key system capabilities, we have made a very advanced system even better.”

The enhanced application includes a simple and more user-friendly interface that enables distribution center staff at all levels to perform tasks and enter data without any complex programming. In addition, they can update analyses easily as needs change. New or updated features include:

• A Formula Builder for creating, analyzing and customizing work standards for many types of assignments
• Dynamic congestion delay calculations
• More precise and accurate travel calculations
• The ability to support multiple distribution centers with one piece of hardware—a significant cost savings for multi-location facilities
• Customizable performance reports by employee, product group, or location group

FLEXdls™ incorporates West Monroe Partners’ extensive experience in labor and productivity management honed over several decades of work for some of North America’s largest retail and distribution organizations. The company’s unique engineered labor standards methodology combines the use of Predetermined Motion Time Systems, time studies, and work sampling to measure labor activities and generate the most accurate labor standards.

West Monroe Partners is completing the first installation of the enhanced FLEXdls™ product now for a leading global distribution company. It will demonstrate the updated product to the public for the first time on October 7-9 at the International Food Service Distribution Association conference in Louisville, Kentucky.