Completed WMS projects

WIEDEMANN GmbH & Co. KG

Selecting a warehouse management system

Branch

• Sanitary industry

The team warehouse logistics was asked for assistance by the company WIEDEMANN GmbH & Co. KG (WIEDEMANN) during the selection of a warehouse management system (WMS) for the new warehouse in Ahrensburg.The family business WIEDEMANN is a group with more than 50 years of business experience.

While in the past the company was just supplying the sugar industry WIEDEMANN nowadays is one of the largest suppliers of domestic and industrial appliances in Northern Germany. Its assortment includes heating, air conditioning, controlling, fittings, sanitary devices, medical engineering & care as well as tubes. As partner of the food-processing industry with a main focus on the sugar beet processing industry, WIEDEMANN also supplies the necessary equipment, facilities and engineering.

Reason and goal
In recent years, the WIEDEMANN group has grown considerably also by the take-over of direct competitors. Because it had planned to build a new warehouse and due to an insufficient functionality of its current system one of these companies had just started the project “Introduction of a new warehouse management system”. In order to harmonize the IT landscape the project was extended to the complete group whereas the WMS should be used at first at the initial warehouse location. The team warehouse logistics was responsible for collecting information about potential WMS providers.

The objective was to provide founded information about suitable WMS providers and their systems. On the one hand it should be ensured that the future requirements on the functioning as well as on the information technology were met by the new WMS. On the other hand, it had to be made sure that the potential WMS provider and WIEDEMANN were a “good match”.

Requirement specification
The requirements on the future WMS were defined in a performance specification according to WIEDEMANN’s long-term groupwide logistic concept. An important factor was, among others, the management of batch numbers. Furthermore, it should be possible to photograph each outgoing shipment and to link this photo to the order.

International Market Survey WMS
WIEDEMANN used the online WMS selection to identify potential WMS providers. This onlne WMS selection is based on the International Market Survey Warehouse Management Systems which was carried out by Fraunhofer IML. This market survey studies the WMS market by means of a questionnaire with about 3.500 single aspects which summarizes the performance of currently 74 WMS.

According to the data evaluation 10 WMS providers met the exclusion criteria (among others the management of batch numbers) as well as the other requirements by WIEDEMANN owing to an extensive range of functions.

Workshop WMS selection
After evaluating the offers and visiting several reference plants WIEDEMANN reduced the number of potential WMS providers to two. During a joint workshop with the team warehouse logistics these providers were “put to the acid test”.

• The scope of functions of both WMS was compared in detail pointing out the weaknesses and strengths.
• The offers were checked with regard to completeness and scope.
• The offerers were compared with regard to company size, number of staff, references, etc.

Furthermore, WIEDEMANN would be able to carry out a second call for tenders. An exact offer could be made out according to the requirement specification for function which were not defined in the requirement specification and thus not part of the offer.

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