Picking with paper lists that had to be collected from a central printer, unnecessary routes, high manual effort and little efficiency despite a difficult staff shortage: This was the daily work routine in the warehouses of Sanitär-Heinze in 2016 before the start of the project. In FIS Informationssysteme und Consulting, the company found the right partner to provide a remedy with comprehensive digitalization and introduce a full warehouse management system. Exactly one year later, the solution went live in the new company headquarters in Ainring, Bavaria. "We took the new building as an opportunity to digitalize the warehouse," recalls Jörg Teering, IT Manager and long-time employee at Sanitär-Heinze. "The aim was therefore to put the digital warehouse management system into operation at the same time as we moved into the new warehouse."

This has been successful, as paper no longer plays a role in the warehouse at the company headquarters: instead of employees having to print out their picking lists centrally, they receive their orders directly on their mobile handheld scanners or - more recently - on their headsets. "In Ainring, we also introduced pick-by-voice as an alternative for our employees a few weeks ago," says Teering: "The pickers who work with it have become even faster as a result." However, pick-by-voice is not a must, nor can it be due to accessibility - because there are also deaf employees working in the warehouse who are unable to follow spoken instructions. "A certain degree of flexibility in the selection of tools for our warehouse workers is fundamentally important to us," emphasizes Teering. This means that picking lists can still be printed out if necessary, for example in the event of a Wi-Fi outage. And for digital picking, employees have both forklift terminals in the high-bay warehouse and MDE devices in the small parts warehouse at their disposal.

Warehouse management with central monitoring rolled out at 16 locations

Instead of the central printer, the focus in the Sanitär-Heinze warehouses is now on central monitoring to control and monitor all warehouse processes. "As all order pickers work online, they can be controlled in real time," says Markus Feser, Senior Consultant and Project Manager at FIS, describing one advantage of the digital warehouse management system. If, for example, the workload in one part of the warehouse is particularly high, employees can be reallocated there at short notice. Jörg Teering also particularly emphasizes the so-called bypass function in incoming goods: previously, customer-accounted goods were delivered by the supplier and initially stored in the designated storage area in the next step. This also involved several time-consuming work steps, such as deconsolidation in the goods receipt area, storage and the subsequent goods receipt posting. When the goods were removed from storage, they had to be picked and prepared for dispatch by another employee - further inefficient work steps, usually with limited staff. "Now the goods are automatically recognized by the system as bypass-capable and the employee in goods receipt prepares them directly for dispatch. This eliminates the time-consuming and, in this case, unnecessary intermediate steps," explains Teering.

Whether goods receipt, storage, picking, inventory, stock transfer or goods issue - FIS has optimized the warehouse management at Sanitär Heinze across all warehouse processes. So-called SAP optimizations from FIS were also used. "These are ready-made, modular functions that we use to expand the efficiency and functional scope of the SAP system," explains Feser. Sanitär-Heinze thus received solutions tailored to its needs, which were first introduced at the main location in Ainring and gradually rolled out to 15 other locations - the warehouse management system has been productive at the 16th location since February 2023, exactly seven years after the start of the project. As it is a generic solution, the rollout at the subsequent locations was easier, but a solution was not simply imposed on the individual warehouses. "We involved those responsible at each location in order to jointly identify the need for optimization," explains Feser. "The advantage of the generic solution, which is used in the same way at all locations, is that all locations have benefited from new functionalities or adaptations that were developed based on the needs of one warehouse."

Stumbling blocks cleared out of the way together

The human factor also plays a decisive role in the success of digitalization. "Some employees found the changeover easier than others," says Teering. Accompanying change management was therefore important. "We brought those responsible at each location on board at an early stage so that they could act as bridgeheads and advocates," explains Feser. This was particularly important at the site in South Tyrol. "The mentality is different there, as is the language, of course," says Teering. Some employees only speak Italian, so the warehouse management system also had to be multilingual. "The native speakers on site helped us a lot with the translations," recalls Feser, which also speaks for the good cooperation during the entire course of the project.

With the support of FIS, the medium-sized company Sanitär-Heinze was able to completely digitize its warehouse processes at 16 locations and counteract the shortage of skilled workers by increasing the efficiency of processes and employees. All warehouse processes, especially in incoming and outgoing goods, can be monitored and controlled centrally, allowing employees to be deployed much more flexibly. With pick-by-voice and freestyle picking, Sanitär-Heinze also offers ultra-modern working methods, which additionally relieves employees and reduces error rates.