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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 WMS (Warehouse Management System) SuPCIS-L8 from S&P Computersysteme GmbH. The WMS takes over the entire control of the logistical processes - from goods receipt to picking and shipping. With paperless, optimized, 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 GmbH, valuable synergies result that make the processes in the warehouse even more efficient. With a constantly growing range of over 100,000 different articles, Moster supplies the trade, industry and its own branches.
The new central warehouse offers a 4-story shelving facility with approximately 30,000 storage locations, a 9-aisle high-bay warehouse, extensive cut-to-size storage and integrated counter sales.
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 route-optimized and carried out across orders using the pick & pack method. Here, too, the warehouse management system optimizes the processes with intelligent logic. The shipping volume is calculated by SuPCIS-L8 before the picking process and the picking cart is equipped with the appropriate shipping containers. The employee picks directly into the shipping containers - so nothing has to be repacked at the packing stations.
Moster uses the SuPCIS-L8 cockpit with customizable dashboards not only in the control station, 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 as well as the replenishment status at any time and thus keep an eye on every area.
Employees can coordinate themselves independently and perform tasks where their priority is highest. This relieves the workload on the control center and ensures optimum utilization and distribution of the workforce. With 100,000 articles in its range, of which over 20,000 are in stock, Moster already has a very broad stock range. In order to also offer its customers lightning-fast delivery of almost any desired item from the approx. 2 million items in the sector, Moster also relies on cross-docking for goods procured individually for customers. This important logistics process could be optimized significantly 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 optimize our existing logistics processes and complement them with new, customized 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.
