It’s certainly not news that industrial planning and procurement processes are a highly complex, intermeshed collection of a wide range of sub-processes. More intelligent and highly developed solutions are becoming better at striking a balance between unequal variables such as availability, inventories and efforts. Serag-Wiessner, a medium-sized company specialising in medical and pharmaceutical products, coordinates the multitude of parameters it needs so that the balancing act comes off.

From its base in Naila, Bavaria, Serag-Wiessner and its some 200 employees produce and deliver surgical sutures, textile implants for the pelvic floor and infusions. Of the approximately 3,000 articles in its range of surgical sutures and textile implants, categorised by thread type, strength, length and needle-thread combinations, some 1,500 are kept in stock at the warehouse. The company’s 25,000 customers, including hospitals, registered doctors and wholesales both locally and abroad, expect deliveries within 24 to 48 hours. To meet these requirements, stocks are retained in the finished goods warehouse, which was previously dimensioned by the planners based on ERP order proposals. Since their own attempts to significantly reduce stocks were not successful in the past, the management decided to entrust the task to the supply chain specialists at Abels & Kemmner.