Experiments
E-COMMERCE WAREHOUSE SYSTEM FOR A SMART MANUFACTURING COMPANY – SEAL MART D.O.O.
Slovenia
BlueDIH
Experiment objective
Seal-mart d.o.o. is a manufacturing SME, slowly growing into a global company, selling all kinds of sealing solutions, gaskets and engineered plastic and rubber parts for different industries including maritime, wood, food, construction. This 6 month project will create a solid ground for the company’s long-term ambition to enter global markets and have efficient everyday operational capacities. The main aim of the project is digital transformation of the company warehouse system and its connection to the global e-commerce platform. The project is an important step towards digitalising their most pressing challenge – digitalisation of the warehouse through QR code storage and innovative automated storage and retrieval system – both connected to the tailor-made warehouse system and a newly set up global e-commerce platform. As a new eCommerce business, Seal-Mart will save more because their warehouse will effectively utilise their operational assets and labour.
Challenges
- Challenge 1: the company produces different small parts, that are stored in an old-fashioned way in boxes, with handwritten etiquette on them which causes the staff to often misplace some products, miscalculating their stock and going into negative inventory, waste a significant amount of time on finding the right products for the customer orders or even loose an order for not complete it in timely manner
- Challenge 2: storage of small parts in a reduced space, tanks, boxes or any other kind of package. A correct storage of small parts is a must in a manufacturing company where productivity, automation and high safety standards have to meet the requirements of limited floor space.
- Challenge 3: vast amount of stock available for sales not aligned with webpage thus making harder to increase companies global sales.
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Implementation Solution
Results Obtained
The company has now reached the stage where relying on pointing a finger at their inventory and counting becomes a not-so-reliable strategy, thus they will beef up their inventory management tactics with a tailor-made warehouse management system that will provide the access to real-time and accurate data such as: Inventory levels, Shipment and order status, Cost of goods sold, Safety stock and ABC analysis, Inventory turnover ratio. The connected barcode inventory control (with barcode type – QR code) will ensure the quickest and most reliable way of monitoring the inventory movements. The logical continuation of the overall objective of the experiment, which is also tightly connected to the barcode inventory control is the implementation of an automated storage and retrieval system. This is a new technology, designed to store small parts in a reduced space, tanks, boxes or any other kind of package. This system will allow small parts to be loaded and unloaded using the internal warehouse management system (WMS), which eliminates the risk of human error and always allows complete visibility of stored items. The final aim of Seal-Mart is to implement an e-commerce warehouse management system that pushes accurate inventory data to marketplaces and shopping carts. This information is also shared with clients – giving on-schedule and exact information for their orders and shipments means better client support and better customer retention.
With accurate inventory and order data, the company will be able to improve their forecasting accuracy and optimize their inventory levels. They will be able to hold the right inventory mix and quantity and minimize their inventory holding costs, streamlining the eCommerce fulfilment process and make operations more efficient and integrating their eCommerce store.