\\\ Manufacturing \\\ Success story
Syspro hammers down warehouse costs for Select Hardware
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elect Hardware supplies hardware products to a wide range of customers, including major DIY chains such as Homebase, Screwfix and
Woodies in Ireland, independent traders and buying groups such as BHF-BSSA (the independent retailers’ association) and Home Hardware. Part of the North American Shepherd Hardware Group, Select Hardware began trading in 1995 as an entrepreneurial business in the UK that literally sold Shepherd Hardware products from the back of a car.
Fifteen years later Select Hardware has a 55,000 sq ft warehouse in Rowley Regis (Birmingham), stocks over 4500 stock- keeping units (SKUs), acquired three independent businesses – Map Hardware, Basic Hardware, and Headbourne and has a team of 30 people. The company shares a dedicated sourcing and manufacturing facility in China which supplies prepackaged products to the whole of the Shepherd Hardware Group. With the implementation of a Syspro enterprise resource planning (ERP) system from Manchester-based K3 Business Technology Group, much of Select Hardware’s warehousing and distribution is automated as is its sales functions. This is very different to pre Syspro days, when the company relied on an accounting package and a “manual” form of MRP (material requirements planning). This required reports to be run from the accounting system to obtain an average number for each stock item sold and then visually checking a hefty 40-page bi-fold stock sheet to identify each stock item that needed replenishing.
New thinking
The company’s financial director, Tony Birkin, instigated the search for a system that would give Select Hardware the ability to automate its processes. After reviewing several
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MANUFACTURING &LOGISTICS
IT October 2011
systems, he handed over the final selection of two competing products to Steve Killworth, who had recently joined the Select Hardware as its operations manager. Killworth was responsible for implementing ERP in another Shepherd Hardware Group company, so he knew what to look for in a system. He was won over by the way Syspro would handle Select Hardware’s relatively simplistic goods- in, goods-out warehousing and distribution operation as well as provide the power of a fully featured and integrated ERP system.
“Syspro is a fully featured and integrated system, but you don’t have to jump right in and use every single feature. We can activate different features as we need them. In particular, I discovered that Syspro could readily manage our warehousing operation without the need for a dedicated warehouse
“
With a large range of products running into the hundreds of thousands of individual items, keeping track of stock is a necessity for Select Hardware.
managed without it is a puzzle. Additionally, our stock system was archaic. We had to book pallets onto locations on a spreadsheet. We tried to keep this up to date, but ultimately things would be missed. Syspro revolutionised this by bringing in accurate reporting and gave us the ability to interrogate
By automating picking we’ll gain further accuracies but first we have to standardise our barcode format within the Group. This is something we are intending to do over the next 12 months. We are also keen to automate our landed cost tracking. We currently do this outside of the system, but Syspro provides the means to handle this automatically once it is set up.”
– Steve Killworth, Select Hardware.
management system (WMS). We have very little stock movement apart from replenishing pick slots and consolidating stock, so a full- blown WMS is overkill. From a user interface point of view, as well as the way it processed information, the system is straightforward and easy to use and understand. By selecting Syspro we would gain much tighter control of warehousing as well as automating our MRP and S&OP (sales and operations planning),” says Killworth.
“Our existing sales and operations planning approach was very basic and, therefore, Syspro was a leap forward for us. How we
and drill down to the information we needed for sales and stock turns. Gaining all of this plus the ability to tighten up warehousing by tracking bin locations and stock with bar code scanners was a major boost in efficiency for Select Hardware,” he adds.
Reducing stock and inventory costs
Syspro’s integrated MRP and Forecasting modules have allowed Select Hardware to make a major dent in its stock holdings. The company has been able to reduce its stock
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