BHS – Inventory under the magnifying glass
Reduce unnecessary stock and increase delivery readiness
Austria covers an area of almost 84,000 square kilometres. This area could be completely covered by the corrugated board produced annually by all of BHS Corrugated’s corrugators. There is therefore no question that the globally positioned machine and plant manufacturer must be optimally positioned not only in terms of its equipment, but also in terms of its IT infrastructure: So that the stock level is always aligned with demand and all goods are in the right place at the right time. Accordingly, the existing system 2020 was successfully extended by the SAP-based module GIB Controlling from ifm.
Family business, global player, market leader: This is BHS Corrugated, headquartered in Weiherhammer, Bavaria, with over 3,000 employees and subsidiaries in more than 20 countries worldwide. In addition to the development and production of corrugating rolls, corrugating systems and the associated individual units, the company offers its customers a wide range of lifecycle services, digital services and products.
It is therefore not surprising that digitalisation and Industry 4.0 have long been central topics at BHS Corrugated – on the one hand, in order to optimise process parameters, improve automation levels and overall production efficiency; on the other hand, in order to be able to offer an attractive and high-quality portfolio in the long term.
Construction site: stock transparency
To this end, internal business processes and systems are also constantly under scrutiny, and he who seeks, finds: In 2020, for example, the potential for optimisation included excessively high stocks in units and euros as well as inadequate transparency of stocks, their range and availability.
According to Linda Wismeth, Programme Manager Disposition & Analytics at BHS Corrugated, the requirements for the new software that was to eliminate these grievances were obvious: "We urgently needed a solution that would provide us with the necessary stock transparency by firstly identifying slow movers and determining dead stocks, secondly performing ABC and XYZ analyses quickly and reliably – until now we had been using Microsoft Excel for this – and thirdly reliably checking the level of safety stocks and reorder points."
Fittingly, the solution module GIB Controlling from the GIB Suite was presented during the "Disposition under SAP" training course at the Management Forum Starnberg in April 2019, "and fortunately we quickly found the answer or the right software solution for our current challenges and were thus also able to fully meet our management's wish to make our inventories more transparent and reduce them at the same time," Linda Wismeth recalls.
ifm convinces with functionality and competence
The solution GIB Controlling, including RWB (Rule Workbench) and TWB (Target Workbench), was then implemented quickly and easily and required only marginal adjustments, e.g. additionally required SAP fields in the GUI. After only 3 months of implementation, one to two employees have been working with the new module at a total of six locations since February 2020.
Highlights of GIB Controlling at a glance
- Dead stock for forecast materials reduced by 27 per cent
- Despite an increase in consumption of 54 per cent, 96 per cent availability could always be guaranteed
- Stock value of slow movers reduced by up to approx. 96 per cent attimes (until March 2021 at the US site)
- Approx. 47,000 material masters adjusted with little manual effort and disposition optimised globally at BHS Corrugated
- Return on investment (RoI) achieved 10 months after implementation
Conclusion: Goals consistently achieved
Today, the Bavarian machine and plant manufacturer benefits from transparent data regarding missing parts, backlogs and delivery capability across all countries and thus from immense time savings, "because the desired information is all visible with one click, without having to spend a long time searching and comparing in various Excel tables or masks", reports Linda Wismeth. Accordingly, all ABC/XYZ analyses (potential analyses) run easily across all plants, which in turn results in optimised scheduling thanks to the corresponding scheduling settings – including better availability and fewer warehouse clutters.
On top of that, the employees benefit from the extremely user-friendly, self-explanatory solution, which is indistinguishable from the SAP standard in terms of look and feel, so that end users do not have to spend a long time getting used to it.
Excellent supply chain
The successes already achieved can be proven in black and white, but for Linda Wismeth and her colleagues the journey does not end here. "We have been live with SAP S/4HANA since this year, of course continue to use ifm's GIB solutions and look relaxed towards the future and the digital age," Linda Wismeth sums up, "because it makes it easy to meet our customers' requirements as precisely as possible and at the same time always be at the cutting edge of technology.
This statement is further supported by the fact that the lifecycle company won the SCM Award – because this award only goes to companies that actively promote the automation and networking of production and machines, use GIB software for this purpose and demonstrably achieve reduced stock levels, improved delivery accuracy and increasing profits.
Peter Gruhle (on the left), Head of SD; Data, Programs and Solution at BHS Corrugated, receives the GIB SCM Award from Bilgin Kilic (on the right). (© Gerrit Bender DESIGN)
