Migrating a warehouse in Sweden to Reflex WMS
Bauhaus, founded in Mannheim, Germany, in 1960, pioneered the concept of large, specialist retail in the home improvement and gardening sector. The company, which operates around 270 stores in 19 countries, is experiencing strong business growth in Scandinavia. “To keep pace with our growth, we need a unified platform to manage our warehouses,” said Håkan Asp, Logistics Development Manager at Bauhaus. “We’ve built a relationship of trust with the founders of our partner, A2B solutions. When they showed us Reflex WMS, we were impressed by the application’s wealth of features and its user-friendly graphical interface.”
Having successfully deployed Hardis Group’s warehouse management software at a new, 15,000 sq. m logistics site to the north of Oslo in Norway, the retailer has decided to roll out Reflex WMS at a second warehouse. The site, which opened in 2019 and is located in Sickla, to the south of Stockholm in Sweden, measures 14,000 sq. m and can hold 22,000 e-commerce items. As part of this second deployment, Reflex will be connected to a suite of other systems including the Unistar ERP system, the Logtrade transport management software, and Parcelcube, an automated parcel volume and weight measurement application.
Building on a successful first deployment in Norway
For the first deployment in Norway, the Bauhaus team configured Reflex so it could also meet the operational needs of the retailer’s Swedish logistics platforms. “We’ve done a lot of recycling for the Swedish site, but there are still some differences in terms of processes and physical layout, which imply separate configurations for the two warehouses,” said Asp. “For the training and commissioning, our colleagues in Norway will train their Swedish peers how to use Reflex and share the key lessons learned from the recent deployment.”
In the coming months, Reflex WMS will be interfaced with PTV Group’s transport optimization applications, with the SAP ERP system, and with a goods tracking system. The retailer is also exploring the option of introducing mechanized systems