Personal, competent and close - that is the promise Moster, the electrical wholesaler, makes to its customers. In order to maintain this promise even in the face of enormous growth and to establish itself as the electrical wholesaler of the future, Moster moved into a new company headquarters at the end of 2019 and the connected logistics centre at the beginning of 2020. Moster has made a conscious decision to remain at its headquarters in Ludwigshafen - the city where Rudolf Moster founded the company in 1946.
In the new central warehouse, which is four times as large, Moster relies on the Warehouse Management System (WMS) SuPCIS-L8 from S&P Computersysteme. The WMS takes over the entire control of the logistical processes - from goods receipt to picking and dispatch. With paperless, optimised and intelligent processes and data updated in real time, the new WMS ensures future-proof logistics for the electrical wholesaler. In interaction with the ERP system SHCware from SHComputersysteme, valuable synergies arise that make the processes in the warehouse even more efficient. Moster supplies a steadily growing range of over 100,000 different articles to specialist trades, industry and its own branches.
The new central warehouse offers a 4-storey shelf system with approx. 30,000 storage spaces, a 9-aisle high-bay warehouse, an extensive cut-to-size warehouse and an integrated counter sales area.
Efficient and fast logistics is important in almost every industry. In electrical wholesale in particular, however, fast delivery is essential, as tradesmen urgently need certain components on their construction sites and often cannot wait another day. For this reason, S&P has designed a process that enables lightning-fast yet efficient order picking: next-day delivery is standard for almost all orders, and orders that are needed within an hour are processed via an express counter with its own order picking.
The high-bay warehouse offers the possibility to store larger items and long goods in separate areas. These items are picked in a route-optimised manner with high-speed vehicles and provided with a shipping label directly during order picking using mobile printers. This lean process saves time and shipping packaging. Another industry solution offered by S&P for electrical wholesalers is the integration of a dedicated replenishment area for cables in the high-bay warehouse. The cables can be picked at the cable cutting rack in the desired length and the WMS supports this flexible process with an automatic replenishment logic.
In the shelf storage system, picking is optimised in terms of route and across orders using the pick & pack process. Here, too, the warehouse management system optimises the processes with an intelligent logic: the shipping volume is calculated by SUPCIS-L8 before the picking process and the picking trolley is equipped with the corresponding shipping containers. The employee picks directly into the shipping containers - so there is no need to repack at the packing stations.
Moster uses the SuPCIS-L8 cockpit with customisable dashboards not only in the control room but also on large screens that can be viewed by all employees in the picking area. The employees can thus quickly record the number of pending orders and the replenishment status at any time and thus keep an eye on every area.
This allows the employees to coordinate themselves independently and perform tasks where their priority is highest. This relieves the control centre and ensures optimal utilisation and distribution of the workforce. With 100,000 articles in the assortment, of which more than 20,000 are in stock, Moster already has a very broad stock range. In order to offer its customers lightning-fast delivery of almost every desired article of the approximately 2 million possible articles in the industry, Moster relies on cross-docking - also for goods procured individually for customers. This important logistics process could be significantly optimised with the help of the intelligent logic of SuPCIS-L8: Time and effort were massively reduced.
The smooth interaction between the ERP system SHCware and the WMS SuPCIS-L8 offers many other advantages. For example, Moster was able to set up a special picking area where customer projects are picked and buffered on an order-by-order basis. The customer can then call up the dispatch of individual items from his total order as required. For this kind of provisioning of items and ensuring lightning-fast dispatch, smooth integration of SuPCIS-L8 with SHCware and real-time data updates are essential.
"With the move to our new central warehouse and the use of intelligent technologies, we are now optimally equipped for the future. S&P has understood how to optimise our existing logistics processes and complement them with new, customised strategies. With our new scalable WMS SuPCIS-L8, nothing stands in the way of further growth through increased customer service," says Götz Aumüller, Managing Director at Moster.
