Laboratory Supplier Boom strives to build healthier inventories

“As a huge wholesaler in the laboratory world, you have to be reliable and offer a wide assortment of products,” states Bertjan Boom, director at Boom. While the business has succeeded in ensuring customers have lots of choice, the director admits that inventory levels had got out of hand.

He explains how the implementation of Slim4 helped his business to attain a healthier inventory while simultaneously achieving stronger service levels. “Awareness and knowledge of the importance of inventory optimisation continues to improve within our organisation.”

“In comparison to other IT vendors, I like how the people at Slimstock are very pragmatic.”

Bertjan Boom

Director at Boom

Boom is a wholesaler of laboratory products. As a trusted partner to laboratories across the Netherlands and Belgium, the business delivers a wide range of equipment, suppliers and chemicals. Bertjan Boom explains why reliability is so important for his customers: “The products we work with are strictly controlled. Our customers must be able to order from us on a weekly or even daily basis. For this reason, our customer depend on us to provide the quality brands they expect on time.”

Proactive approach to inventory management

Things are going well for Boom as the turnover and assortment grow steadily. There are more than 70,000 items on offer via the webshop, of which 22,000 were introduced last year. A large proportion of the assortment is purchased to order. However, the company still stocks around 6,000 items.

“We are a wholesaler, but we were never very active when it came to inventory management. Our ERP system Microsoft Dynamics NAV offered few options for this; you could set a few parameters, but we never actually checked whether they were still correct. As a consequence, we had a high level of obsolescence, as well as an excessive amount of errors and backorders.”

Backorders decrease by 85%

“I had heard a lot about Slimstock and knew many other companies were using their inventory optimisation tool, Slim4.” The solution was implemented in the first half of 2016 and within a year, improvements were already clearly visible. The service level of the stocked items has improved from 68% to 92%. Furthermore, service levels for A-items is now stable at 96%. As a result, the number of backorders has fallen by 85%. Boom goes on to add: “A large proportion of our surplus stock has also now been cleared.”

Inspiring training

The director at Boom expects to achieve further improvements with Slim4. He noted with satisfaction: “What you see now is that the buyers and planners have become real supply chain experts. The stock is proactively evaluated on a monthly basis to determine which items should or should not be kept in stock. With that, obsolescence has fallen sharply.”

Employees of Boom have regularly attended training courses at the Slimstock Academy, and are constantly inspired by the experiences of other Slim4 customers. “We are now actively thinking about how we can achieve optimum order quantities. We are also starting to enrich Slim4 with additional information, such as price lists and expiry dates. I am convinced that we will continue to optimise our inventory in the future.”