Coulisse case study

Since 1992 Coulisse has designed, produced and sold window decorations for an increasing number of international clients. It supplies an immense variety of articles – ranging from wooden to roller blinds, vertical to pleated blinds, in standard sizes and as accessories – always meeting the business’ top-quality requirements. To support their continuous growth, Coulisse utilised Slim4 to increase product availability and reduce inventory levels. Harco Evers, responsible for the inventory, immediately recognised the benefits.

“As we are growing so quickly, it is very important for us to keep as tight a grip on our inventory. The range at Coulisse consists of an enormous variety of articles, about 2500 in total, spread across 6 different locations. One of our strategic objectives is to provide our customers with the highest possible standard of reliability; a big challenge given that most of our suppliers are based in the Far East.

Therefore, we have to ensure our inventory and purchase orders are managed accurately. That is exactly the reason why we chose Slim4. We now work more efficiently and our inventory management is more effective. As a result, we can stay on top of our inventory.”

Evers goes on to add: “The overall inventory value has gone down, the amount of ‘wrong’ stock is going down and the stock turn increased by 25%. Slim4 has proven its value. In particular, working with the management by exception principle has helped to significantly increase the level of control we have over the inventory. We only investigate the items where Slim4 indicates an exception. This, in turn, has enabled us to increase availability, and achieve considerable cost savings. We can also now communicate much better with our suppliers.”

“In line with our rapid growth in recent times, our product range has grown by over 30%. This has placed a Signiant amount of additional pressure across the organisation. However, thanks to Slim4, and the optimisation of our processes, we have attained a 40% increase in sales with the same number of people, working the same number of hours. Furthermore, we now have less working capital tied up in stock. Without such a powerful tool, it would be very dangerous to grow at this rate.”

In addition to the benefits Slim4 delivered in the day-to-day operations of the company, it is also being used to help Coulisse develop the organisation as a whole. Evers explains: “Slim4 provides us with better management information faster. This means we can let our suppliers know about our future requirements at an earlier stage. As a result, we are better positioned to manage the value chain better. We can therefore influence supplier’s production plans and optimise container loads for delivery.”

Evers was also very positive about the implementation process of Slim4: “We freed up time and manpower for the implementation and Slimstock delivered on all their promises. As there is a standard interface with our Exact environment, we didn’t even have to invest any IT effort from our side. Also, due to the excellent training program Slimstock has, our people were able to pick the system up quickly. At the moment, we service the European market with approximately 50 employees. To remain flexible and deliver quality products and quality service, you have to be able to trust your IT systems; and Slim4 offers us just that.”