Bossard: En route to Industry 4.0.
The Swiss-based Bossard Group provides its customers, in 26 countries, with logistical concept support worldwide to help them to set up and optimise new production lines, key to which are optimal design, sizing and layout of C-part containers. Kanban systems are used to ensure the best-possible efficiency when supplying production processes, as these are geared towards actual consumption and therefore reduce the amount of stock kept locally for production.
Projects
At the turn of the new millennium, Bossard began developing ARIMS, an in-house software solution that helps to stock production lines, processes data from the scales fitted below the containers, and triggers orders. The software is also used for customer administration. As the years went by, a complex, comprehensive and fully automated procurement system emerged.
In 2013, Ergon was commissioned with the task of overhauling the existing ARIMS solution. Bossard wanted the new software to be upgradeable and web-based, but with the option for offline use.
Success
Ergon got to work analysing and processing 15 years of business know-how from Bossard and repositioned the system landscape so that it could be used as an enabler for transfer of traditional business to the digital world.
SmartOrdering is a system that constantly analyses the consumption of C-parts and uses machine learning to define ideal re-order parameters, automatically, ensuring that Bossard clients’ storage facilities are neither too full nor entirely empty.
Success
The results include increased availability of C-parts for customers, 70 per cent fewer express deliveries and significant cost savings.