Completed WMS projects
Deere & Company
Selecting a Warehouse Management System
Branch
- Spare parts industry
- Automotive industry
The Team warehouse logistics were asked by John Deere Distribution, a regional office of Deere & Company (John Deere), to select a Warehouse Management System (WMS) for the spare parts centre Bruchsal (European Parts Distribution Centre, EPDC). John Deere has over 5,400 employees in five sites, mak-ing them the biggest manufacturers of agricultural tech-nology in Germany. With a sales volume of 2.1 Billion Eu-ros the company is responsible for about half of the entire sales volume of the German agricultural technology in-dustry.
Aims and Objectives
Since 1983 the EPDC supplies all John Deere sales partners in Europe, Africa and the Middle East with spare parts and compo-nents. The depot also ensures the spare parts supply for all John Deere products produced in Europe. Customers can obtain informa-tion on parts as well as order and reserve parts online with the indi-vidual sales partners.
The existing system was to be replaced for organisational and tech-nical reasons. Additionally, the maintenance warranties for the exist-ing system were expiring.
The aim was to create functional requirement specifications that describe the performance requirements. Also, a short list of potential WMS suppliers was to be drawn up.
Selecting a WMS
The Team warehouse logistics carried out a two day workshop to-gether with John Deere. During an inspection of the warehouse in-formation on the current processes and future requirements were gathered. A customer-specific requirement profile could then be developed.
International Market Study WMS
Suitable WMS suppliers were identified with the help of the Interna-tional Market Study Warehouse Management Systems. This study is carried out by the Fraunhofer IML and offers a comprehen-sive overview of the WMS market. It includes the performance pro-files of more than 70 WMS suppliers and covers over 2,500 individ-ual aspects.
The Online WMS-Selection offered John Deere an individual and up-to-date overview of the WMS market. A number of suitable WMS suppliers were included in a preliminary shortlist.
Defining the requirements
John Deere subsequently decided on developing the requirement specification for the WMS together with the Fraunhofer IML. One reason for this was to avoid “operational blindness”, another was to profit from the experience and expertise of the Team warehouse logistics in defining the necessary requirements. The requirements were then described in detail and systematically edited in the course of several workshops.
Preparing for the Request for Proposals
After the requirement specifications had been drawn up, the new and more detailed requirement profile was used to carry out a new Online WMS Selection. During the evaluation of the bids hard criteria such as the range of functions as well as soft criteria such as the market position of the supplier and an assessment of the implemen-tation risk were taken into consideration.
Based on the comparison of bids, the team warehouse logistics rec-ommended three suppliers for a more detailed presentation of their offers.
Result
The support of the Team warehouse logistics resulted in
- functional requirement specifications that describe all require-ments for the request for proposals and
- a list of suitable suppliers, whose WMS all fulfil the necessary requirements.
