The online–retailer for furniture has optimized its goods inbound in a rush project. Instead of using e-mail, over 300 suppliers now book their time slots on the cloud platform from leogistics. The focus was on a delivery platform with SAP connection without media discontinuity. The new solution ensures delivery transparency and accurate estimates of how much time loading teams need at the ramp to receive goods.
home24
Industry: furniture
Number of employees: more than 1,500
Annual sales: 492 million euros (2020)
Affiliates: Headquarters in Berlin, logistics centers in Ludwigsfelde, Walsrode and Halle an der Saale, 11 showrooms and 5 outlets in the DACH region.
New possibilities in notification through time slot management and collaborative delivery platform
The close cooperation with partners from Europe and Asia, for example, often small manufacturers, places considerable challenges on logistics planning for home24. On average, 35 to 40 trucks per day deliver goods to the site in Halle, Germany, only. The online furniture retailer works with around 300 partners.
In previous years, this still involved comparatively complex manual processes. First, the supplier sent an advance delivery bill by mail. This was used to check which products would be delivered and how long unloading would take. Then home24 sent an e-mail with a suggested time slot, which the supplier then had to confirm or reject.
To manage the appointments, a Google calendar was used for each of the seven to fourteen gates per logistics center. In the ERP environment, the online furniture retailer uses SAP ERP ECC 1610, and in warehouse management EWM 9.4. However, the systems were not sufficient for logistics and coordination with suppliers.
The solution at a glance
- Implementation of myleo / dsc with supply, yard, tnt and slot
- Consistent delivery creation with myleo / supply and SAP interfaces without media discontinuity
- myleo / yard tracks the processing of the delivery in individual process steps, graphical display on site map
- Unloading teams can see the expected workload
The solution at a glance
Implementation of myleo / dsc with supply, yard, tnt and slot
Consistent delivery creation with myleo / supply and SAP interfaces without media discontinuity
myleo / yard tracks the processing of the delivery in individual process steps, graphical display on site map
Unloading teams can see the expected workload
Disentangle and automate notification processes
In the new solution, the notification is only received by the SAP system once a time slot has been booked. Suppliers can book their time slots independently, and the final confirmation takes place in the system via click, without e-mail exchange. From the ERP system, all orders are automatically transferred to myleo / dsc after they have been created there. Goods receipt continues in EWM and in myleo / dsc the tracking and tracing of the truck is. “It has become beautifully transparent,” says Kraska.
For the implementation, the partners were brought on board right away, because successfully integrating the suppliers was a high priority for home24. “We presented our ideas to a number of pilot suppliers and gathered their feedback – the focus was deliberately also on smaller suppliers who might have difficulties with new software,” explains the Strategic Technical Officer. But the solution passed the practical test: “Everyone was thrilled: After three clicks, they now have their time slot,” Kraska sums up.
Today, the supplier logs in into the cloud solution, sees the destinations he is assigned to, and can select where he wants to go and when.
The truck driver brings the e-mail with a booking number to register at the gate, who then sends him to the parking lot or the scheduled gate. Seven unloading teams are waiting there in Walsrode and fourteen in Halle, each with four or five employees.
The most important improvements
- Creation of transparency in incoming goods: Who delivers what and when?
- No more time-consuming manual agreements with suppliers
- More accurate delivery date forecasts for end customers
- Concrete occupancy planning for the loading bays
- Optimal utilization of loading teams
- Capacity planning
- More realistic estimation of unloading and clearing time
We were able to complete the project in record time, everything went better than average - this is not a matter of course in IT projects and was mainly due to the very good project management by leogistics and the great support from the home24 team.
Transparency brings savings
Logistics processes have already become up to 15 percent more efficient, says Kraska. There is also a clear potential benefit in terms of delivery reliability and customer loyalty: “The greater the delivery transparency, the more reliably we can show customers the delivery time in the web store,” says the logistics expert. For this purpose, the time is tracked in the yard. Typical points are “truck at the gate”, “check-in at the goods receiving office”, “start” and “end of unloading”, as well as “area has been cleared” and “truck has left the yard”. In the future, the company also wants to tackle the difficult issue of optimizing long-term and area planning. In addition, there are considerations to digitalize the outbound processes and to use of track & trace for the trucks.
