Bouwmaat

Slimstock’s platform, Slim4, provides a wealth of information that supply chain partners can benefit from. Jeroen de Haan, supply chain manager at Bouwmaat explains how sharing supply chain insights has increased availability & reduced operational costs.

Jeroen de Haan is a strong advocate for sharing information with supply chain partners. “This can bring so many benefits; I don’t understand why many companies are so hesitant. We share a lot of information with our suppliers, right down to the Point of Sales data from our branches.”

And adds, “I played the Supply Chain Game by Slimstock, and it highlighted just how crucial this is. If demand changes at the end of the chain and suppliers are not informed, or are informed too late, it directly results in ripple effects and unnecessary stock build-up further upstream.”

Bouwmaat is a building materials wholesaler with 47 branches across the Netherlands. “Stock availability is crucial in our market,” says De Haan. “When construction professionals come to collect their supplies and materials, they must be available. Ensuring this availability requires timely communication with suppliers. By providing them with our sales data, forecasts, and insights into local stock levels, we not only prevent them from overstocking but also enable them to anticipate demand more effectively, ensuring more reliable deliveries.”

Proactively Reporting Inventory Issues

Sharing supply chain data at Bouwmaat is not a one-way street. Suppliers are also expected to be transparent and proactively inform Bouwmaat about potential stock issues. “If a supplier knows in advance that a certain item will be temporarily unavailable, we want to be informed beforehand. This allows us to optimally allocate the remaining stock and disappoint as few customers as possible. Alternatively, we can try to source the item from another supplier. Timely communication often helps to manage an issue before it becomes a real problem.”

Supply Chain Reorganisation

In 2017, Bouwmaat implemented a major change in its supply chain network by establishing a central distribution centre (DC). Previously, the company operated a decentralised model where all branches were supplied directly by suppliers. Using Slim4, branches placed their orders individually with suppliers.

“By centralising, we achieved a much stronger purchasing position and a significant logistics efficiency boost,” explains De Haan. “Consider this: with nearly 50 branches and 120 suppliers, there were around 6,000 different goods flows within our supply chain. We’ve already removed 120,000 of the 200,000 deliveries from our branches (60%), which has saved us a tremendous amount of time and money.”

Sharing Forecasts with Logistics Service Providers

Bouwmaat has outsourced its logistics operations to Ceva Logistics, a leading supply chain service provider. “Sharing supply chain information with them is equally important,” says De Haan. “Based on purchasing and sales forecasts from Slim4, they can anticipate workload and plan their workforce accordingly. Employees no longer accept being informed on the day whether they need to work, so capacity planning is becoming increasingly important in this sector. This is even more critical in automated warehouses, where fixed capacity means workload must be distributed evenly over the days.”

According to De Haan, Slim4 offers additional functionality that enhances collaboration with logistics service providers. “By allowing Slim4 to calculate the optimal order moments and quantities, we can keep inbound and outbound handling at Ceva to a minimum, which directly translates into cost savings. Ceva charges us for all logistics activities, so we see the impact immediately on our invoices.”

Leveraging Slim4 Across the Entire Supply Chain

Surely Slimstock has played a really important role in enabling supply chain transformation, Slim4 remains the central tool for Bouwmaat, both for managing central stock and supplying the branches. And it works well: with 40,000 order lines sent to branches weekly, the wholesaler achieves a service level of 99.0%. But Slimstock’s AI-driven supply chain platform also provides an excellent foundation to inform the entire supply chain. De Haan states, “The entire chain can benefit from Slim4. We’ve already seen a significant improvement in supplier delivery performance. Sharing inventory information with partners always pays off.”

Providing Customers with Real-Time Supply Chain Insights

Providing supply chain partners with insight into your inventory can help the entire chain offer a better proposition to end customers, suggests Jeroen de Haan. “If we know what a supplier has in stock, we can better inform our customers: Is the item still available to order? When can they expect it? And if an item is unavailable, we can assist customers by looking for alternatives together. In e-commerce, it’s becoming increasingly important to have visibility into supplier stock availability, as you often sell items that you don’t keep in stock yourself.”