This shipping process is to be introduced at other European locations in the future.

Capacity for more than 100,000 items
The new logistics center represents the largest single investment in the company's history: Böllhoff has invested 50 million euros in the new building, which is designed for capacities of more than 100,000 storable items with a 35-meter-high automated high-bay warehouse (HBW) and a 20-meter-high automated small parts warehouse (AS/RS).

The new building is once again part of a larger modernization project to optimize all planning and control processes for storage, transport and shipping in collaboration with the logistics software specialist inconso. "With highly flexible logistics IT, outgoing goods can now be controlled on the basis of route planning and also taking into account last-minute shipping changes," explains Stefan Stübbe, Head of IT Projects, Processes and Consulting at Böllhoff. "This is made possible by parameter-controlled buffering of the packages, which can be controlled directly to the gate via a dynamic shipping area in order to significantly increase the process speed in this area," says Stübbe.

Rapid response to customer requests
Thanks to the new system landscape, Böllhoff can also respond to customer requests at short notice with a significantly improved response time. The new web portal can be used to influence the shipping process at any time, while the current shipping data is transferred electronically and in real time to the relevant service provider thanks to the digitized loading process.

Böllhoff also gains flexibility through special functionalities for special case processing, for example to be able to make changes to the shipping order at the latest possible time. With the help of the solution implemented by inconso, packages or entire orders can also be changed on the loading track and goods can be discharged. If a customer needs their goods particularly urgently, the order can be agilely decoupled and accelerated by courier dispatch, for example.

The Shipping & Dispatch System provides a range of additional shipping options: The solution maps all processes, from CEP shipping to forwarding agents commissioned by the customer and self-collectors. Böllhoff also keeps an eye on the delivery process after dispatch, for example through standardized real-time tracking (track and trace), which combines delivery activities among a large number of logistics service providers involved and transmits information on the delivery status to the transport management system in real time.