References planning BHS tabletop AG

Site strategy

The Customer

With around 40 million products sold per year, BHS tabletop AG is the world's leading supplier of professional porcelain for table settings. In addition to its three established brands Bauscher, Tafelstern and Schönwald, BHS is expanding its product range with the brand PLAYGROUND for trendy products as well as Mogogo for buffet furniture. The company's own decoration and logistics centre (DLZ) in Selb, opened in 2002, stores, refines and ships the entire production of BHS tabletop AG. In addition, products are produced and stored at two external warehouses in Weiden and Schönwald.

The Project

LOGSOL supported BHS in the development of a logistics strategy for the finishing and distribution of the classic portfolio - porcelain - as well as for the distribution of the "new" brands PLAYGROUND and Mogogo. The starting points for the analysis are the Weiden and Schönwald locations as well as the DLZ.

The Execution

On the basis of location-based process recordings and recorded movement data from a representative period, LOGSOL first analysed the crucial material flows. The findings formed the basis for the weak-point analysis, which was documented in an optimization list, a lean-management-tool. After completion of the analysis, LOGSOL drew up possible future scenarios in joint workshops at the customer's premises and compared them in a specially developed evaluation tool. With the help of this tool, BHS can evaluate the logistical development over the next five years in a standardised manner, including process, transport and packaging costs as well as the space required. All influencing variables are stored as parameters in the tool so that future changes in the cost structure can also be tracked.

The Results

As part of BHS TABLETOP's five-year planning, a standardized tool for evaluating various future scenarios in logistics was developed and integrated. The actual situation forms the benchmark in the profitability analysis. In addition to the future scenario and the scenario with minimal costs, further functional strategies were derived and evaluated in a sensitivity analysis. The most functional and flexible scenario was ultimately the consolidation of logistics processes at one external location and the relocation of packaging services to external service providers. In future, the merchandise will not be handled via the highly automated location in Selb, but rather via an external location due to the inhomogeneous article structure.