De Lijn streamlines its stock management through SAP Extended Warehouse Management

Challenge

With so many locations to run, bus service provider De Lijn was eager to work systematically and exercise better control over its stock distributed from its central warehouse in Antwerp. In the past, when an employee ordered an item, the system sent an email to the HR manager, who entered the order manually in the warehouse app for order-picking. Orders that required approval were placed on paper. This created room for error and slowed down the logistical process. As uniform structures and processes make stock management clear and transparent, De Lijn decided to ask TheValueChain to get SAP installed and give this project the best possible foundation.

Solution

TheValueChain paid close attention to De Lijn’s exact needs and proceeded to propose a plan for successful SAP implementation. ‘This implementation meant a great improvement for De Lijn’s supply chain management,’ says Hans De Wulf, who supervised the project. ‘From purchase to delivery and payment, the entire process warehouse goods go through was perfectly suitable for SAP.’

The plan was for warehouse staff to be able to scan incoming and outgoing items. These items are traceable via SAP EWM. The system includes contracts and invoices and stores all data on suppliers and individual products. The overview of bus fuels such as diesel, heating oil and Adblue was also included through tank management integration. ‘TheValueChain provided complete end-to-end integration from order to shipment by using SAP Sales and Distribution, SAP Human Resource and SAP Extended Warehouse Management,’ says Ferdi Meynen of TheValueChain.

Result

Since the beginning of this month, all 45 warehouses where De Lijn manages its stock have been using SAP Extended Warehouse Management. This concerns some 45,000 items, such as maintenance and repair parts, clothing, office supplies and fuel. All are appropriately registered and delivered to a hundred depots, workshops and maintenance centres. The previously used order process is now fully automated and digitised via SAP Workflow and the logistical chain in SAP ends with the generation of the Bpost labels for shipment.

In addition, De Lijn employees now have access to a webshop where they can order workwear on the basis of an annually allocated balance. Balance management has been automated as well. Every day, the system checks whether there are any changes in the employee’s status that require a recalculation of the balance. Every year, new budgets are allocated and a portion of the remaining balance is transferred. The SAP Fiori webshop gives users detailed insight into the order history and changes in assigned balances. Since going live, the webshop has processed over 5,000 orders.