The Ostendorf Group has successfully introduced the pL-Store® warehouse management system to further increase stock reliability and delivery quality.
Industry: Building materials wholesale
About Gebr. Ostendorf Kunststoffe GmbH
- Founded in 1973
- Headquarters in Vechta
- 450 employees
- 4 plants in Germany
- 5 locations abroad
- Leading supplier of sewage pipe systems
- 14,400 Euro pallet spaces
- 4,000 items permanently in stock
Focus on transparency and inventory security
Established structures and a paper-based working method imply that there were increasing deficits in terms of transparency, inventory security and delivery quality. This meant optimizing logistics processes, eliminating media disruptions and switching to full digitalization in order to ultimately implement robust processes within and between the plants. The main difficulty lay in finding a coherent concept for the efficient handling of inter-company logistics between the two northern locations.
The challenge
- ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) connection as central control between the connected WMS
- Incoming goods with notified pallets
- Direct loading from the block yard
- Picking based on pallets that are pre-planned by the ERP
- Order compilation from several locations with support for the corresponding stock transfer
- Deposit registration
- Connection to an automated high-bay warehouse (HRL)
Fit for the challenges of today and tomorrow
To reduce throughput times and increase adherence to delivery dates, the partners finally established a cross-docking process between the plants and across the three systems in use. Both plants act as both a supplier and a transshipment point. Another advantage is that stocks can be reduced and storage costs saved. At the same time, storage and retrieval processes are eliminated, which also reduces the time and money required.
The system, designed as a channel storage system with 14,400 Euro pallet spaces, was put into productive operation in May 2017 after being connected to the pL-Store® Techline warehouse management system.
“The system has a separate material flow computer, for which proLogistik has developed an interface to the pL-Store® Techline warehouse management system. This covers the storage and retrieval orders as well as error handling,” says proLogistik project manager Sascha Gutherz, summarizing the specific features of this phase.
“Positive effects are directly noticeable in inter-company logistics. We are already seeing an increase in processing speed, a lower error rate and a significant increase in inventory reliability.”
Stephan Osterhues, Head of IT – Ostendorf Kunststoffe
