In order to further increase inventory security and with it delivery quality, the Ostendorf group of companies has successfully introduced the warehouse management system pL-Store®.
Industry: Wholesale of building materials
About Gebr. Ostendorf Plastics GmbH
- Foundation 1973
- Headquarters in Vechta
- 450 employees
- 4 plants in Germany
- 5 locations abroad
- leading supplier of wastewater piping systems
- 14,400 Euro pallet storage spaces
- 4,000 items permanently in stock
Focus on transparency and inventory security
Grown structures as well as a paper-based way of working imply that there were increasing deficits in terms of transparency, inventory security and delivery quality. The aim was therefore to optimize logistics processes, eliminate media discontinuities and switch to full digitization in order to ultimately be able to implement robust processes within and between the plants. The main difficulty was to find a coherent concept for the efficient handling of inter-company logistics between the two northern locations.
Challenge
- ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) connection as central control between the connected LVS
- Goods receipt with notified pallets
- Direct loading from block yard
- Picking based on pallets pre-planned by ERP
- Order compilation from multiple locations with support for appropriate stock transfer
- Deposit collection
- Connection to an automated high-bay warehouse (HRL)
Fit for the challenges of today and tomorrow
Finally, to reduce lead times and increase on-time delivery, the partners established a cross-docking process between the plants and across the three systems in use. In this context, both plants act as both supplier and transshipment point. Another advantage is that inventories can be reduced and storage costs saved. At the same time, storage and retrieval processes are eliminated, so that the time and monetary expenditure are reduced here as well.
The facility, which is designed as a channel storage system with 14,400 euro pallet spaces, went into productive operation in May 2017 after being connected to the pL-Store® Techline control system.
“The plant has a separate material flow computer for which proLogistik has developed an interface to the pL-Store® Techline-LVS. This is used to cover the storage and retrieval orders as well as error handling,” says proLogistik project manager Sascha Gutherz, summarizing the specific features in this phase.
“Positive effects are directly noticeable in inter-company logistics. Here we are already seeing increased speed in processing, a lower error rate, and significantly increased inventory security.”
Stephan Osterhues, Head of IT – Ostendorf Kunststoffe
