Screw wholesaler WEWO always has stock levels under control with AI

The product portfolio of screw and fastening parts wholesaler WEWO comprises more than 600,000 different parts. The company guarantees immediate product availability for around 40,000 items. Reliable procurement planning and scheduling are required to ensure that the right quantity is always in stock. The employees are significantly supported in this by the LOGOMATE inventory management software from REMIRA.

The WEWO company is a wholesaler of standard and fastening parts, tools, C-parts/industrial services, factory equipment and chemical-technical products. The head office is located in Straelen on the Lower Rhine. A total of 110 employees work at five locations, including a central warehouse and two external warehouses. Around 5,000 to 6,000 customers in Germany, Austria and the Benelux countries are supplied every year. Five employees are responsible for purchasing and scheduling. They ensure that the most important product groups are always available. At the same time, the aim is to avoid overstocking in the warehouses.

High manual effort

Before the introduction of the REMIRA LOGOMATE replenishment software, this work involved a great deal of manual effort. Employees had to check the stock levels in the system on a daily basis and trigger orders when the reorder levels were reached. Overstocks also had to be identified and adjusted manually. An internal survey revealed that a third of working time was spent checking the reorder levels. "The employees lacked this time for value-adding activities. We simply lacked automation in these processes," summarize Purchasing Manager Lars Budinger and IT Manager Frank Janssen. There are several suppliers for the main product groups in the wholesaler's portfolio. Large order quantities are therefore put out to tender. Before the introduction of LOGOMATE, the preparation of such an order usually took three to four weeks, as the requirements for the coming months were calculated manually based on the sales figures. "That was an extremely large amount of work," adds Budinger. "We had to manually check all historical consumption in the ERP system in order to determine an estimate of future demand quantities for the new tender." 

REMIRA has been already known

The requirements for the software solution were therefore clear: orders should be bundled so that dispatchers do not have to check the reorder levels on a daily basis. The workload for purchasing and scheduling was to be reduced by 50% to free up time for other tasks. WEWO was already familiar with the Dortmund-based supply chain specialist, having successfully reduced its stocktaking costs by more than 95% with REMIRA's STATCONTROL Cloud software for several years. LOGOMATE had also been used briefly by the wholesaler of screws and fasteners. After just a short time, the improvements brought about by the tried-and-tested scheduling software became noticeable. Although the wholesale company is still in the introductory phase, the scheduling effort has already been significantly reduced, praises Budinger:

"The reorder points for the most important product groups are now calculated automatically. The forecasts we receive from LOGOMATE are reliable. The figures are very good."

The tenders for the main product groups can now also be prepared much faster and more efficiently. The automated requirements planning in LOGOMATE quickly creates a requirements overview and prepares the invitation to tender in the ERP system for dispatch to the selected suppliers, reports the purchasing manager. "Our employees get on very well with the product. It makes our daily sales and procurement planning easier," Budinger explains.  However, some industry-specific features still lead to manual effort. As the current prices and stock levels of suppliers are sometimes not received digitally, WEWO employees have to ask for them. Thanks to LOGOMATE, however, there is now time for these activities. If input variables from Purchasing are adjusted in the ERP system, the inventory management software immediately recalculates the requirements and order recommendations. "This would be very time-consuming manually," explains Budinger. His interim conclusion is correspondingly positive:

"Thanks to LOGOMATE, we can now make decisions more effectively and quickly."

For the future, those responsible at WEWO are hoping for further automation steps and are certain that the collaboration with REMIRA still has a lot of potential for this.

Find out more about our LOGOMATE inventory management software here.

Photos: WEWO