The deployment was unusual because of the speed of the wireless rollout, which allows greater efficiency and accuracy than did older methods based on paper systems and wires, said Jason Witty, director of information technology at Southern, which is based in Miami.

The warehouse is 650,000 square feet, about the size of eight football fields, and combines three northern Florida distribution sites into one, Witty said. The centralized facility will save the company about $4 million a year, he said.

Witty wouldn't comment on the cost of the facility or the wireless network and related inventory applications. Major vendors on the project were IBM, Cisco Systems Inc. and Symbol Technologies Inc., he said.

Construction of the building began in early 2005, but deployment of the wireless network began in June 2005 and lasted into January 2006, Witty said.

Witty said he knew upfront that doing a Wi-Fi site survey would be a challenge, because of all the metal in the warehouse building, including racks to hold bottles of liquor, and large metal construction equipment. Metal tends to disrupt wireless signals.