Lüning: Small stocks and better impact

For 160 years, the Lüning Group from Rietberg in East Westphalia has been represented in wholesale and retail with food and non-food items. Since 1989, the cooperative Edeka Minden-Hannover has held a 49% stake in the group. In this strong partnership, the advantages of a large trading group are successfully combined with the strengths of a medium-sized family business. This includes an extensive range of products from top brands, innovative own brands and classic discount products at competitive prices. The Lüning Group has two independent logistics centres in East Westphalia (Food) and Magdeburg (Non Food). The product range includes more than 10,000 food and around 3,000 non-food items, including own brands from Lüning. Cross-docking and transshipment, as well as a selection of more than 300 direct suppliers, allow customers to access an even wider range of more than 40,000 food and 20,000 non-food items.

"With LOGOMATE, we have achieved our goal of a small stock pile with the greatest possible effect."

Restart with LOGOMATE

In the course of the continuous growth of the company, the significant expansion of the range of goods and the introduction of a new merchandise management system (WWS), the need came up to put logistics on a new level. REMIRA LOGOMATE introduced an automatic inventory planning solution. David Hüging, Head of Inventory Management at the Lüning Group, cites “as small a stock as possible with the greatest possible impact” as one of the most important goals. Around four-fifths of the range consists of food and, among other reasons, numerous items with short expiration date. This requires continuous stock security and fast, flexible and reliable delivery – from fresh service with perishable goods such as vegetables, fruit and meat to canned goods and other products with relatively long shelf life.

Fast results

LOGOMATE centralizes and automates this complex task. After only a few months, stocks declined significantly with increased delivery capability. A lot of productivity can be gained through automatic processes. With accurate sales forecasts, LOGOMATE dynamically adjusts safety stocks to the right level for each item at each location. The needs-based inventory management ensures lower costs, more transparency and higher returns. At Lüning, all items are now more readily available, without unnecessarily high stocks that tie up capital filling the warehouses. The flow of goods has been optimized, because with every efficient disposition decision, a whole chain of closely coordinated actions is set in motion from delivery from the warehouse to placement on the shelf.

Better promotion plan

The numerous advertising and sales campaigns as well as the seasonal planning, e.g. before Christmas, have also been considerably simplified with the exact sales calculations of LOGOMATE, which are based on the evaluation of the integrated historical sales data: “Many Information that we had to painstakingly compile manually is now available at a glance in the graphical user interface of the LOGOMATE cockpit,” emphasizes the inventory specialist Hüging. In addition, manual sources of error have been eliminated and time has been gained for special tasks: The increase in efficiency through automatic scheduling has made it possible for employees to take even better care of individual requests from certain customers.

Facts

• On average, approx. 20,000 items
• in 31 markets
• Small inventory
• Optimized flow of goods