Office furniture with a wide range of variants
König + Neurath manufactures high-quality office furniture made to order. Sales are handled by specialist retailers and key accounts. Orders are customized using a configuration module with optional features.
The full-range supplier’s production takes place directly at the Karben site, where the 90,000-square-meter production plant is divided into prefabrication metal, prefabrication wood, warehouse and logistics for externally purchased goods, pre-assembly and final assembly, provision and shipping.
The wide product range, of which approx. 30% is custom-produced, results in a high level of vertical integration and significant product diversity.
Growing storage requirements
A side effect of this large and continuously growing product variety is that König + Neurath also needs particularly high storage capacities. The space requirement of the purchased-parts warehouse alone is enormous, but historically grown, its capacities had not been regularly maintained. Fire protection issues and ease of use were also relevant factors.
With the plan to create a clearer, more transparent warehouse structure and set up location-based storage management with SAP S/4HANA came the decision to build an additional fully automated high-bay warehouse. The business relationship with io has therefore flourished since its beginnings in 2020.
The system-managed ERP inventory warehouse was upgraded to SAP EWM MFS, fully automating all processes from storage to retrieval. This also makes it easy to control driverless transport systems.
SAP EWM was then also successfully implemented at a manual inventory warehouse.
Key Facts
Client
König + Neurath is one of the most successful suppliers of office furniture and room solutions with a high level of vertical integration and significant product diversity. Founded in 1925, the family-owned company operates on a 90,000-square-meter production facility at its headquarters in Karben. It has five showrooms throughout Germany as well as international representations in France, England, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium/Luxembourg and the Netherlands.
Requirements
- IT connected automated narrow-aisle warehouse and other automated and manual storage areas
- Detailed specification of logistics processes and implementation in SAP EWM
- Transferring processes to other warehouse areas
- Establishing successful communication between EWM and interfaces to subsystems
- Hotline and ticket support for productive storage areas
Solution
- Implementing SAP EWM for automated narrow-aisle warehouse via the MFS interface as well as other automated and manual warehouse areas
- Initial concept right up to go-live and support
Highlights
- Integrating automatic narrow-aisle warehouse
- Goods receiving and packing workstations in UI5
- Integrating existing production planning tools
- Synchronized exchange of all information between systems
In addition to the usual time and budget constraints, it was a particular challenge that production processes were not to be interrupted.
Reflecting on the process, a number of factors contributed significantly to the successful implementation:
- Allowing the necessary time for all the necessary steps
- All required resources being available in good time
- Transparent communication
- Testing and documenting as many options as possible
In the meantime, a number of other IT projects to further enhance the IT landscape have been jointly implemented in an ongoing business relationship. Next on the agenda is to optimize transport management.
