Implementation of Approductivity, logistics, and warehouse process optimization
Productivity Optimization Project with Approductivity
Case Study
Improvement of Bomari SL’s productivity and efficiency through the optimisation of its logistics process and the pilot integration of Approductivity for integrated management of different processes and real-time updating and control.
Grupo Bomari received support from ACCIÓ, the Agency for Business Competitiveness of the Government of Catalonia, through the ACCIÓ Coupons programme. Itemsa is an ACCIÓ-accredited consultant for improving competitiveness and supporting the transition of Catalan companies towards Industry 4.0, and Approductivity is one of the Industry 4.0 tools offered by ACCIÓ through its marketplace.
These grants are currently no longer available, but at Itemsa, as ACCIÓ-accredited consultants, we can help you apply for and obtain similar funding and develop projects such as this one.
Initial Situation
Bomari, SL is responsible for Perfumerías Facial and Droguería Hermanos Martín, with more than forty points of sale across the province of Barcelona. Bomari is a well-established company with more than 50 years of history, characterised by customer service and specialised in-store advice.
Bomari has grown and adapted to change by introducing new tools and processes. However, its expansion and the management from a single centralised warehouse make a management update necessary in order to improve efficiency and warehouse and logistics management.
With around 20,000 active references, the central warehouse is the core of the activity that guarantees proper store supply. Logistics is therefore the key process in terms of costs, required resources, times, etc.
Consultancy and Planning
The initial phase of the project consists of analysing the current situation and carrying out consultancy work to detect critical points and methods and procedures requiring intervention in order to improve management efficiency.
Bomari has grown and evolved with slight changes to its management system, and its flows are not interconnected. Administrative and operational flows are managed through applications that are not integrated with each other, operate independently, and require a large amount of manual work.
The warehouse does not follow a standardised organisational scheme, and exhaustive control is carried out upon store reception because, in order to avoid the need for in-store storage, references are sent to the point of sale individually or in reduced quantities.
Implementation
In order to reduce logistics costs and support growth in a sustainable and efficient way for Bomari, it is necessary to optimise production processes. To achieve this, a pilot implementation of the Approductivity software is carried out.
The implementation of this tool will allow the integration of processes into a single application in order to achieve the required flexibility and agility, as well as to detect possible deviations in real time and react quickly.
Opportunities for improving productivity, flexibility, and efficiency in operational and logistics processes are approached from an Industry 4.0 perspective. A process based on a strategic and organisational change that enables the company’s competitiveness to improve in a sustainable and scalable way in the future.
The consultancy includes Methods and Time Studies, Workload Studies, Method Improvement, Flow Optimisation, Order and Cleanliness (5S), Non-Value-Added Reduction, and Standardisation. All of this with the aim of identifying the potential for productivity improvement.
The KPIs defined for evaluation and compliance monitoring are linked to performance, efficiency, and quality indicators.
To achieve productivity improvement objectives, the corrective actions proposed for Grupo Bomari range from warehouse organisation according to A-B-C criteria and product volume to process digitalisation.
The digitalisation and integration of processes are managed through the Approductivity IT solution and the configuration of its Dynamic Balancing and Competitiveness, KPIs and Incentives Manager modules according to the company’s needs.
Approductivity enables Bomari to carry out Methods and Time Studies to establish standard times for each task, create different scenarios to forecast saturation and calculate workload balancing, monitor the process in real time and detect inefficiencies before they occur, as well as calculate compliance with established key indicators and the allocation of variable compensation where applicable.
Objectives
The main objectives are twofold:
- Improve the company’s current competitiveness in terms of productivity, quality, flexibility, and efficiency.
- Guarantee its future through the necessary strategic, organisational, and cultural transformation towards Industry 4.0.
This digital improvement is based on the company’s digital transformation and is founded on:
- Improvement and standardisation of processes.
- Definition of key indicators (KPIs) for real-time process measurement.
- Reduction of the GAP between reality and defined standards through the use of ERP systems, Radio Frequency, RFID tags, MES…
- Definition and implementation of the necessary resources to achieve productivity improvement objectives and guarantee continuous improvement.
Results Achieved
The implemented improvements achieve savings of between 15% and 20% compared to the initial situation:
- Productivity improvement through better processes and work methods: 16.3% reduction in work times.
- Performance improvement through reducing the GAP (reality-standard) and waste by 17.8%.
This productivity increase is achieved thanks to operational flexibility while maintaining optimisation levels.
This productivity improvement is complemented by the guarantee of having information and calculations adjusted to reality, immediately and without margin for error, thanks to process digitalisation and the integration of administrative, operational, and organisational flows throughout the entire sales process, from the beginning (store requests) to the end of the process (sale to the final customer).
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Reduction in work times
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Performance improvement
