Erich Schlenkrich
Vice President Business Development Industrial & Consumer
What do you do if the high-pressure washer you need to use has a clogged nozzle? The Kärcher distribution center in southwest Germany ensures the fast replacement of spare parts. The company relies on a fulfillment solution from TGW to support its spare parts fulfillment. The Obersontheim facility ships all the spare parts, accessories and some of the cleaning agents to its customers. This adds up to about 2.8 million order lines a year.
"We looked for a systems integrator, covering as many aspects as possible. TGW offered all these features: They were able to implement the entire solution." Roland Fahrmeier, Vice President Logistics Management Kärcher
REDUCING LEAD TIMES to 30 minutes
SYNCHRONIZING the different picking areas
INCREASING STORAGE CAPACITY by 40%
PICKING ERROR RATE REDUCED (from > 10% to < 0.01%)
The rapid growth, the continuous expansion in the range of products and the increasing need to supply to end customers directly has made it necessary to devise a new concept for the location in 2009. To cope with the enormous quantity of shipments and the short delivery times required by customers, the order lead times in the distribution center had to be reduced significantly. In addition, the goal was to increase the product storage capacity and reduce the picking error rate to under 0.01 percent.
Higher order throughput which is achieved through a reduction in the amount of time order picking employees spend walking. The automated systems allow shorter order processing times and allow customer orders to be fulfilled optimally via the different channels (dealers, private customers, service installers and shipment to international warehouses).
Kärcher also benefits from synchronization of the different order picking areas, increased warehouse capacity, reduced transport costs due to consolidating orders into as few packages as possible, and the reduction in picking error rates.
Kärcher is considered one of the world's leading providers of cleaning systems. The line of appliances, accessories and consumables is used in residential and commercial applications. From the distribution center in Obersontheim, the company supplies customers on all continents with over 60,000 different spare parts and accessories.
