Again and again, food ends up in waste because the best-before date has been exceeded. This is exactly what the logistics service provider Geyer Food Konzept wants to avoid. In its warehouse in southern Germany, The intelligent logistic software LOGOMATE from REMIRA ensures sustainable and automated inventory management: Thanks to precise forecasts and reliable monitoring of the durability data, the spoiling rate is dropped. At the same time, the company was able to increase its delivery capability to almost 99.8%.
Geyer Food Concept supplies customers from the catering industry and large consumers in the Region of Lake Constance-Ulm-Allgäu with a wide range of food products: from TK goods to fresh fruit and vegetables to meat and dairy products. The capacity of the warehouse in Bad Waldsee in Upper Swabia – where the company headquarters is located at the same time – comprises 1,700 pallet spaces for 2,100 items. A further 5,400 items will be procured on an order-by-order basis.
As a food logistics service provider, the company has to pay particular attention to temperature-sensitive, perishable goods and volatile purchase prices when managing its own inventory. Until now, Geyer Food did not have a specialised inventory management software for the scheduling of a total of 7,500 items. Instead, the existing ERP system (Dynamics NAV) created disposition suggestions that were calculated only from the averages of the past few months. Trends, seasonal fluctuations or temporary sales effects were not taken into account. This inaccurate data base repeatedly led to out-of-stock situations or overstocks. In practice, the ERP system also revealed another weakness: it generated a list of those items that exceed their best-before date at a given time – but without predicting whether the affected items would be affected by this date are still in stock at all. As a result, Geyer Food Concept often had to sell goods with relatively short shelf life with strong discounts.
The target was therefore clearly defined: the new inventory management solution should ensure better product availability. At the same time, Geyer Food Concept planned to reduce basic inventories by at least 10% in order to have more capacity for promotional purchases and thus to make better use of temporary purchase discounts. In addition, the company wanted to have less spoilable goods in stock through more precise scheduling. By reacting in good time to expiring best-before dates, less goods should also have to be destroyed or sold at the slingshot price.
In the interests of more sustainable and economical inventory management, the food logistics service provider decided to introduce the intelligent disposition tool LOGOMATE from REMIRA. The solution uses an expiration list to predict which stored items will not be sold on time before the expiration date is reached. Geyer Food Concept can now counteract it at an early stage and thus significantly reduce the spoilage rate. More precise forecasts and a more accurate needs assessment prevent unnecessary safety stocks from accumulating in the future. In addition, LOGOMATE ensures that dispatchers respond better to promotional prices and, in the event of price increases, arrange for additional stockpiling of the corresponding items.
About eight weeks after the introduction of LOGOMATE, Geyer Food Concept was able to reduce the quota of items that are not in stock by 50%. As a result, the company achieves a delivery capability of almost 99.8%. In addition, the number of items on the expiration list could be minimized. The items that are currently on the list are still relics from the time before LogoMate. Geyer Food Concept assumes that the forfeiture list will be reduced by at least 75% in the long term due to the optimized disposition.