Jens Fischer

COO | Jäger Direkt

"We were able to reduce our inventory by 8% without impacting service"

Founded in 1990, JÄGER DIREKT is an independently owned company that supplies specialist electrical companies with everything they need daily.

Following successful growth in the German market, the two subsidiaries JÄGER DIREKT Austria and the Netherlands were founded in 2001 and 2005.

So far, more than 250 jobs have been created at over six locations. “To guarantee our customers a high availability of goods, over time we purchased more and more inventory as well increased our own production,” says Jens Fischer, who is responsible for scheduling at JÄGER DIREKT. With the help of Slim4, the inventory has been significantly reduced – without reducing the service level.

Inventory reduction through optimisation of inventory

JÄGER DIREKT unconditionally strives to offer customers 100% reliability. As such, every customer has a direct contact person and thus “quick access” to all services and the entire range is essential. “To guarantee our customers, the best possible service, we primarily rely on very short delivery times and maximum product availability.”

“With Slim4, we have succeeded in further improving our service standards. Using the software’s inventory control functionality, we were able to reduce our inventory by around 8% – without having to accept any restrictions in our ability to deliver.” Jens Fischer: “We are now managing our warehouse optimally and that we have struck the right balance between low stocks and high availability.”

Greater resilience

A reliable forecast is essential to attain high product availability at JÄGER DIREKT. “Above all, the advertising campaigns, which are often planned at short notice, ensure a high turnover of selected articles. In the past, it was always difficult and very time-consuming to determine the exact invent level for this,” says Fischer, describing inventory control without Slim4. With Slimstock’s inventory optimisation software, these items are now managed automatically and the system can easily reorganize them. The planners no longer have to plan a lot of time for this.

Everything at a glance

In addition to reducing inventory, JÄGER DIREKT pursued the goal of implementing a new, uniform inventory process in the central warehouse with the connection of Slim4. The inventory tool now makes this possible. Slim4 generates precise demand forecasts, which are visually prepared by the system in such a way that the planners of the different warehouses receive uniform and very clear decision-making aids.

“A big advantage of Slim4 is that the system also visually indicates impending stock shortages and delivery bottlenecks very clearly,” emphasizes Marko Kozlowski, Business Consulting Manager at Slimstock.

Trail proves the value of Slim4

The decision to have the inventory optimized by a separate software tool was not an easy one for JÄGER DIREKT. The company therefore initially opted for a pilot project that evaluated part of the data for the first year. The result was so convincing that JÄGER DIREKT ultimately entrusted Slimstock with the entire inventory management. “We are pleased to have found a very cooperative and trustworthy partner for handling our sensitive data in Slimstock,” emphasizes Jens Fischer.