REWE Group Buying Italy acts as a purchasing and logistics service provider for all of REWE Group's strategic food retail business units in Europe .
With direct access to regional sourcing markets, REWE Group Buying Italy supports purchasing throughout the entire procurement process: from identifying new suppliers and product ideas to introducing the final product in the Group's countries. REWE Group Buying Italy manages the transportation of goods from Italy and ensures timely procurement.
The collaboration with the REWE Group Buying Italy team was established to optimise the management and processes involving inbound and outbound goods, with the aim of reducing warehouse stock levels, lowering operating costs, and improving cash flow. The project covered both the analysis for improving internal logistics processes (operational flow) and the information flow (covering activities in the offices at the Oppeano headquarters in Verona).
Regarding the project dedicated to inbound logistics, the analysis of stock turnover using the ABS-RRS matrix proved useful for classifying and monitoring the entry of goods into the warehouse. Based on the matrix output, it was then possible to determine the appropriate stock levels to maintain by creating a tool to manage them using a pull-kanban approach. In addition to offering customers fresher products and better managing peak demand, the creation of a customised tool for managing the flow of goods led to a 19% increase in warehouse turnover since the project began, and a 12% reduction in pallet spaces. This facilitated volume handling, which increased by 5% in one year, while maintaining the same level of service. The success achieved with the initial product lines made it possible to extend the tool to all of the more than 800 managed product codes.
In the outbound area, the creation of a system for measuring the organisation of office processes proved useful in determining workflow and balancing production capacity – specifically, the team’s availability – based on demand. In both areas, the use of problem-solving techniques – to eliminate non-value-added activities – helped both to remove workflow obstacles and to anticipate them in advance, particularly when setting up new processes. The application of this technique made it possible to establish KPIs that supported monitoring and the development of robust processes, leading to savings of 300 hours per year for outbound and 500 for inbound logistics.
Awareness of daily activities and the ability to analyze processes from a lean perspective also grew in both teams.
