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With our wide-ranging IT expertise and in-depth industry know-how, we advise and support logistics and retail companies on their digital transformation journey. We support them from the conception of a professional process design through to modern solutions for transport management, the implementation of digital warehouse processes and the automated processing of forwarding orders or data flows. Together with an international retail group, our IT experts have now automated its warehouse locations and streamlined and harmonized the associated processes. This complex project can confidently be regarded as a flagship project in the field of retail logistics.
Multi-layered and complex IT project
As part of the overall project, which we have documented in detail in our white paper, a well-known customer from the retail sector is building several new warehouse locations and putting them into operation. One of the retail group’s primary objectives is to achieve the highest possible degree of automation at its individual warehouse locations. A key challenge for the project managers was to consider different automation options due to the different characteristics of the various product ranges. Existing processes and IT solutions of the retail group were to be adapted and expanded in order to provide a central solution for connecting the various intralogistics solutions at the individual locations. Existing warehouses are to be successively automated and modernized using the new process and IT landscape. In addition, commissioning at the warehouse locations should be planned, smooth and take place within an ambitious time frame.
The project team has identified and implemented numerous success factors
The project team identified a number of milestones in the project so that these challenges could be successfully completed in the overall project. These success factors were ultimately decisive in ensuring that the retail group’s project goals were achieved. A key factor throughout the project was to achieve process conformity across all the different warehouse locations. This meant nothing less than standardizing all processes relating to a warehouse location and establishing the same processes for all warehouse locations in order to take full advantage of the targeted scaling effects. To this end, the retail group connected a specially developed middleware between the respective warehouse management system and the individual, location-specific warehouse control systems, for which external intralogistics providers are responsible. This middleware was newly implemented as part of the overall project and has since ensured smooth communication and process conformity throughout. In addition, all those involved decided to define a sophisticated test strategy at the start of the project. This effort has paid off in full. This is because quality assurance as part of multi-stage test management was firmly anchored in the project organization right from the start and brought the necessary stability to the complex overall project.
Value contribution Quality assurance of great importance
The overriding maxim in the overall project was: “Quality assurance is not everything, but without quality assurance everything is nothing.” Sound advice in this context is essential for the success of such a complex and pioneering IT project if it is to be successfully completed on time and on budget. The IT experts at PTA therefore not only acted as a sparring partner for continuous quality assurance consulting, but also implemented a series of very specific quality assurance measures in the project. Read our detailed white paper to find out which solutions and consulting focuses led to the successful completion of this lighthouse project:
