GRIMME
Success Story
Grimme Landmaschinen optimizes spare parts management with ADD*ONE
SUCCESS STORY
GRIMME LANDMASCHINEN OPTIMIZES SPARE PARTS MANAGEMENT
WITH ADD*ONE
GRIMME Landmaschinenfabrik has been manufacturing high-quality agricultural machinery for over 80 years and is active in potato, beet, and vegetable technology in over 120 countries worldwide. More than 3,100 employees currently work for the GRIMME Group worldwide. GRIMME now uses the ADD*ONE solution suite to schedule and plan logistics for the approximately 120,000 spare parts.
The greatest weakness was the high manual effort required, for example, to keep the reorder point system in the ERP system up to date.
For Sebastian Zumwalde, the goal of analyzing the disposition and planning processes at GRIMME was to identify the weak points and work out recommendations for action to eliminate them. As the analysis revealed, the disposition and planning processes for spare parts at GRIMME had been based on two pillars up to that point.
First, it was based on the reorder point system in the ERP system, which worked based on minimum and multiple quantities. “If the quantity of an article fell below the minimum quantity, the ERP system automatically generated a new order proposal for the respective multiple quantities,” Zumwalde explains the procedure.
The second method, which was used for about 10% to 20% of the articles, consisted of manually creating a monthly sales plan for the year in advance and determining the required monthly quantities for the individual articles from this.
The planning expert adds: “The history of the last one to two years served as the basis for the concrete figures. Based on this, the scheduler gave a personal demand forecast for the next twelve months. This data was stored in the ERP system to trigger the corresponding requirements there.”
These weaknesses should now be eliminated. As a supplement to the existing ERP system SAP, the ADD*ONE solution suite now takes over the planning and creates order proposals. Zumwalde summarizes the successes since the introduction as follows: “ADD*ONE gives us the freedom to focus on the real challenges in our procurement. The interaction of artificial intelligence for the standard cases and human intelligence for the special cases is proving to be a complete success.”
CHALLENGES
- Heterogeneous scheduling and planning processes
- Only semi-annual ERP system updates due to high manual effort
- Semi-annual planning did not take into account the seasonal fluctuations in business, which led to bottlenecks in the supply of spare parts
RESULTS
- Moving away from reacting and towards acting. Thanks to ADD*ONE, the company can proactively intervene in the planning and scheduling processes
- “Management by exception” and automated ordering processes
- Dynamic calculation of optimal safety stocks under the influence of constantly changing environmental parameters
Download – THE WHOLE STORY
Andreas Schäfer
Expert for Supply Chain Optimization
Andreas Schäfer has been working for INFORM GmbH in the Inventory & Supply Chain division since 1999. In his role as sales manager, he supports interested parties from the supply chain sector in the decision-making process for selecting the optimal planning software.
