The Prym Group, founded in 1530 as a company to produce brass and copper, is the oldest industrial family business in Germany. Today, the core competence of the Stolberg-based group of companies are creative products for handicrafts and hobbies, closure systems and accessories as well as high-precision electromechanical components. The Prym Group is represented worldwide with around 3,300 employees at locations in Europe, Asia, Latin/North America and Africa. The group comprises the four market independent segments Prym Consumer, Prym Fashion, Prym Intimates and INOVAN. The group is led by the Prym Management Holding.
Making life easier for people: That is Prym’s claim – and not for its customers, but also for its own employees: The idea of how to make life easier for the forklift drivers and order pickers in the warehouse of the Prym Consumer division came to Oliver Fischer, Head of Logistics and the Goods Centre, his colleague Charles Overtus, Operative Manager of the Goods Centre, and Tomas Hösch, responsible for organisation and project management around SAP, during a visit to a trade fair.
“We actually came across the all-in-one solution Peakboard for data and process visualization rather by chance and immediately thought: With Peakboard we can directly visualize which transport orders have been processed or still have to be processed, where there is a bottleneck etc.”, says Hösch.
Until now, the employees in the warehouse lacked transparency regarding the current workload. They were asssigned by the control center, to drive to or pick up goods from the high-bay warehouse or goods receipt, but they had no overview of the current situation. But even the control station responsible for resource planning could only display tables, not suitable and uncomplicated visualization options.
“Since the price-performance ratio was also right, we decided to test the solution in practical use,” reports Hösch.
By means of a free trial, Prym was first able to see for itself whether Peakboard can really be used to visualize processes, information and data in real time as easily as Peakboard promises, and to place them prominently for employees in all areas: The all-in-one solution consists of software and hardware, combined in a smartphone-sized aluminum box with an integrated WLAN module. Since Peakboard visualizes the data independently, the solution can be used without a central server. Peakboard accesses a data source directly via WLAN or LAN, aggregates the data for visualization and transmits it to the desired (large) screen via an HDMI cable. Possible data sources range from machines, sensors, ERP systems such as SAP to Excel and cloud solutions.
Peakboard passed the practical test at Prym with ease. The project was then implemented within a few weeks. Hösch was supported by Peakboard in the creation of the dashboards.
“The collaboration went very well,” Hösch emphasizes. “Even if there is a need for support now, I usually get help within 24 hours.”
The open and completed workloads of the respective working day are displayed in bar charts. Every day, around 1,200 transport order dispositions are processed in the high-bay warehouse and around 9,000 in the picking area.
Peakboard logs on to the SAP system as a user every 90 seconds, runs the corresponding queries and then pulls the data onto the respective dashboard. Prym uses a total of three monitors with two different templates. The employees in the high-bay warehouse and in the picking department are each informed about the respective workload via one monitor at the entrance to their area. The two templates from picking and high-bay warehouse are displayed alternately to the warehouse control center.
“A huge advantage for us is that we can control the processing of transport orders with Peakboard much more efficiently,” says Hösch. “With Peakboard, the control center can see instantly whether there are many transport orders for replenishment, for example, and can accordingly deduct additional forklift drivers from goods receipt to goods replenishment. We can react much more flexibly to the respective situation.”
In addition, the approximately 40 employees from high-bay warehouses and order picking who are using the Peakboard benefit from the newly gained transparency: they can see exactly where they are, what they have achieved and feel motivated to ‘set the orders on green’.
