More Inventory Reliability, More Customers

With the construction of the new 5,000 m² warehouse at its Limburg, Germany site, Spedition Stähler, the biggest and most established shipping company in the Limburg-Weilburg district, has also taken the decision to install a warehouse management system. It selected the EPG | LFS Warehouse Management System from EPG (Ehrhardt + Partner Gruppe). This has enabled the logistics service provider to considerably improve its inventory accuracy and transparency. The company uses LFS to administer incoming and outgoing goods processes and has consigned those paper lists to history. This modernization of the warehouse management system has enabled Stähler to significantly grow its customer base within a very short period.

“The decision to install LFS was primarily due to the innovative capacity of EPG. We wanted a solution that will provide us with long-term support and also with an opportunity to grow our business. In comparison to other companies on the market, LFS is the most cost-effective both in this regard and also for our requirements,” explains Egon Bürger, Managing Director of Spedition Stähler. “The new warehouse is the heart of the company. This is why it is important to deploy state-of-the-art, innovative technologies here so we can provide future-oriented services for our customers.”

LFS ensures the dynamic location segmentation in the new 12-meter high warehouse. Across the 5,000 m² storage area there are 5,000 shelf slots for pallets. The objective is to turn the goods round as quickly as possible. “Before the installation of LFS a maximum of two people in the warehouse knew where each item was located. There was no location differentiation and access times were much too slow. There were also challenges with the assignment of batches,” continues Egon Bürger. Incoming pallets are now dispatched, labelled and assigned to a unique bin location with the assistance of a mobile workplace system – also supplied by EPG. In theory, each employee has an overview at all times of the current inventory situation as well as of all incoming orders. Stähler is also taking advantage of the integrated LFS module designed for the financial settlement of logistics services and therefore from an additional optimization of its customer invoicing process.

Growing customer-base

The investment has already paid off. Since the introduction of LFS Stähler has already considerably expanded its customer-base. And further future growth is the company’s top priority. “Spedition Stähler is a perfect example of the extreme flexibility of our software solutions as they can suit every requirement. And this is regardless of whether they are deployed by a medium-sized company or a large corporation,” says Dennis Schönherr, Project Manager and Logistics Consultant at EPG. “This is because, and often this is the most important aspect, our systems simply grow with the company and can adapt at any time. The standard version of LFS is already so sophisticated that many functions are available without any additional programming expense.” For example, Spedition Stähler simply connected its new clients itself and was able to work productively for them very quickly.

EPG – Smarter Connected Logistics

EPG is one of the leading international providers of comprehensive Supply Chain Execution Systems (SES) and employs 700 people at 17 locations worldwide. The company supplies its more than 1,500 customers with WMS, WCS, WFM, TMS and voice solutions to optimise logistics processes – from manual to fully automated logistics environments. EPG solutions cover the entire supply chain, from warehouse and road to ground and cargo handling solutions at airports. EPG’s comprehensive portfolio of solutions is complemented by logistics consulting, cloud and managed services and logistics training courses at the company’s own academy.