Wäschekrone Customer Story

Focused initially on linen, Wäschekrone has increasingly shifted its business towards the hotel and catering sector. Today, the company is one of the leading suppliers in the hotel sector, selling a broad portfolio ranging from table linen, bed linen and towels to bedding, box-spring beds and mattresses to kitchen linen.
With flexible minimum order quantities, customers can order single units as well as place large bulk orders. However, this poses several challenges in terms of order and inventory management. The wide variety of product designs and customisation options makes it challenging to decide which products to keep in stock.

Adding to the complexity are the supplier minimum order quantities from the weaving mills and the need to change supply sources to consistently guarantee textile quality.
Technology, therefore, plays a pivotal role in ensuring effective decision-making, considering all the necessary parameters to optimise the supply chain. As ERP systems quickly reach their limits here and only offer basic functionalities for order and materials requirements planning, Wäschekrone decided to enhance the existing ALPHAPLAN software with an agile supply chain planning solution.

To find the right software partner, the Wäschekrone purchasing team first drew up a catalogue of criteria and weighted them accordingly as part of a benefit analysis. This was followed by a market analysis, resulting in a shortlist for the proof of concept.

Shortlisted vendors were given historical consumption data and tasked to create a forecast for the coming month. The users then completed an evaluation process to compare the various systems and projections, ultimately leading to the decision favouring Slimstock’s Supply Chain Planning platform.

“The software selection process was guided heavily by feedback from our planning team, ensuring the chosen solution is both practical and effective in real-world scenarios,” explains Matthias Wagner, Managing Partner of Wäschekrone. He adds, “Our team was impressed by the intuitive nature of Slimstock’s platform. Combined with their supply chain expertise, this made Slimstock the clear choice.”

The solution is seamlessly integrated into the ALPHAPLAN ERP system as an add-on, enabling the company to optimise its inventory supply chain planning process further. The software also scores points for its integrated AI technologies, which use sophisticated algorithms to improve forecasting accuracy and thus promote fact-based ordering decisions.

After choosing Slimstock at the end of last year, the project launched in January. As part of the initiative, Wäschekrone opted for Slimstock’s BI suite (Business Intelligence), ABC analysis and assortment index as a decision-making aid for the right warehouse strategy.

Thanks to the quick implementation of the ERP interface, the software has been successfully live since April. Six weeks after going live, it has already delivered several improvements for the hotel and catering linen specialist. “We are already seeing positive results. The ordering process is now much more agile, and our team is better supported in their daily work.”

The service level-driven forecasting and supply chain planning system provides reliable insights into demand and ensures greater reliability in product availability. As a result, Wäschekrone has already successfully reduced excess stock while increasing the availability of the items that matter most to customers.

In addition, Slimstock’s platform has helped the business to optimise its order intervals and quantities to significantly reduce cost by ensuring the optimum order quantity (EOQ). The solution provides valuable support for managing the minimum order quantities of the weaving mills by enabling the consideration of “group MOQs.” With just a few clicks, Slimstock’s platform compares the forecasts of all articles, considers the respective minimum quantities and reliably shows how many units of towels, bathmats or flannels, for example, are needed to reach the required total number.

The daily manual process of checking items and suppliers to be reordered is now a thing of the past, as the software provides automated exception-based. Matthias Wagner adds: “Another major advantage is that we can run various simulations through different scenarios. For example, we can compare the economically optimal order quantities with the minimum order quantities or the standard replenishment times with the actual delivery time. This significantly enhances our decision-making capabilities.”