Kramp Group

“About three years ago we went over to a new ERP system, namely IMI, but the inventory management module didn’t meet our needs. We started looking for an alternative,” explains Vlogtman. Kramp supplies technical components for the agricultural, industrial, garden and parks market and is therefore very dependent on the season. Slimstock’s Slim4 programme fitted the bill exactly. Vlogtman: “We are now much better at managing seasonal products. Providing there’s enough data in the system, calculations can be made automatically. When there are fluctuations, we can easily anticipate them.”

Kramp supply spare parts for agricultural machinery, and as a result have many part numbers with irregular demand. On the one hand, there was a lot of stock for items with little or no demand, while on the other hand, items in high demand were often out of stock. With these types of part numbers, the stock level and required service is interdependent. Vlogtman points out that Slim4 has logic built into it. “The logic of predicting your demand and consequently looking at what you need to order is well integrated into the system. Slim4 allows our stock controllers to focus on the exceptions which has delivered efficiency gains.”

Vlogtman states: “We now manage a larger number of parts with much less effort. Thirty planners – based in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands – manage all 300,000 stock items.” The Slim4 package is very user friendly. “Even when employees don’t know a lot about inventory management, they can easily work with this system.”

“The stock controllers are more professional and more aware. Another big advantage is that communication with sales has improved. It’s easier to find where problems are. This has had a very positive effect on the communication between sales and purchasing and has resulted in good working relationships.” At the end of the day, Kramp has achieved a significant reduction in inventory and their turnover rate has risen by 30%.