“To keep pace with our growth, we need a unified platform to manage our warehouses. In Europe, other large home improvement and gardening retailers have been using Reflex WMS for many years now. We were impressed with its wealth of features and its flexibility, with its ability to manage both e-commerce and store-related logistics flows, and with its user-friendly graphical interface.”
The project at a glance
After successfully deploying Reflex WMS at a new, 15,000 sq. m warehouse to the north of Oslo, home improvement and gardening retailer Bauhaus has rolled out the application at a second site: a 14,000 sq. m dedicated e-commerce platform to the south of Stockholm.
Context and objectives
Bauhaus, founded in Mannheim, Germany, in 1960, pioneered the concept of large, specialist retail in the home improvement and gardening sector. The company operates around 270 stores in 19 countries.
To keep pace with strong business growth in Scandinavia, Bauhaus decided it needed a unified platform to manage its logistics warehouses. The new application had to be flexible enough to cope with differences in terms of processes and physical layout at its sites. Other important considerations included real-time interoperability with the retailer’s ERP, transportation management, and other systems, and an interface that offered a short learning curve for operators.
Application
Bauhaus opted for the Reflex WMS warehouse management system on account of its ability to process both e-commerce and store replenishment flows, its support for a large number of items (including seasonal products), and its capacity to handle millions of order lines per year across a wide variety of product types.
Having successfully deployed Reflex WMS at a new, 15,000 sq. m logistics site to the north of Oslo, the retailer rolled out Reflex WMS at a second warehouse. The site, which opened in 2019 and is located to the south of Stockholm, measures 14,000 sq. m and can hold 22,000 e-commerce items.
Reflex WMS is connected to a suite of other systems including the SAP and Unistar ERP systems, the Logtrade and PTV Group transport management and optimization tools, the Parcelcube automated parcel volume and weight measurement application, and a goods tracking system. The retailer is exploring the option of introducing mechanized systems.
Benefits
- Support from A2B Solutions, which has a deep understanding of the retailer’s processes and logistics challenges
- Deployment in just a few months thanks to the flexible design of Reflex WMS
- Flexible configuration capabilities to cope with the distinctive features of each logistics site
- Support for interfacing with numerous other tools and applications, and for managing mechanized systems in the future