OVERVIEW

The British branch of a wider European organisation supplying parts for cars, trucks and motorcycles were transforming their IT landscape. Underpinning acquisition of a new and very large warehouse, an IT transformation project was initiated with the Manhattan Active Warehouse Management System at its core.

With a capability of storing millions of spare parts for automobiles, as well as distributing those parts on demand to reginal warehouse storage hubs and individual customers, the performance of the IT systems to support the day to day running of the warehouse was of key importance.

CHALLENGE

The performance test covered goods inward receipt (off of lorry) to goods out dispatch (on to lorry). The test system stock levels had to be maintained prior to and during any tests. The system, due to its AI scaling, had to be ‘warmed up’ and manually pre-scaled before any tests could be performed.

Normally, transactions within the warehouse are performed using mobile devices. The Manhattan Web UI has a Mobile Device Emulation, this emulation was used to perform the performance test.

The standard LoadRunner HTTP protocol recordings showed that even the simplest mobile transaction contained multiple, re-used, complex, correlation keys. After a short period of analysis it was decided that the complexity of handling the required correlation keys for HTTP, while possible, would take too long to code with the LoadRunner HTTP protocol.

SOLUTION

The decision was taken to use an alternative LoadRunner protocol, the .NET (C#) scripting capability, to automate the Manhattan Web UI mobile device emulator using Selenium Web Driver.

Once the keying steps for the required transactions had been identified, a library was created with Web Driver to perform click and typing actions, retrieve text from the emulator, and to synchronise with emulator objects. The Web Driver libraries were copied to the LoadRunner script folder and referenced within the script.

Common functions such as login, printer configuration and main menu navigation were created to form a template scripts.

Debugging is not possible for .NET scripts within LoadRunner, as this had the potential to slow down script development. The template script included a ‘debug’ flag that when set, would run a visible browser rather than in headless mode (that we would use to run the tests), log additional exception information (the action causing the exception and the last successful action) and terminate execution leaving the browser session open.

RESULTS

During a period of a month or so of test execution, slow performance was observed around Inbound processes, particularly Receiving, Sorting & Put Away. The system was capturing and reporting HTTP 400 and 500 Errors when medium load levels were applied.

Further analysis revealed five individual endpoints that exhibited long response times whilst the performance tests were executing.

OUTCOME

The customer has gone live with a limited rollout.

The Manhattan Active Warehouse Management System warehouse model is being updated to more closely reflect the warehouse's physical landscape.

The poorly performing endpoints are being closely monitored whilst further investigation takes place.