Alfort & Cronholm AB has implemented RELEX’s replenishment solution at its central warehouse.

The Swedish wholesale company Alfort & Cronholm offers its own strong brands within product areas such as painting tools, chemicals, cleaning equipment, wood and laminate flooring, as well as floor and wood care products. In addition, the company co-operates with well-known suppliers within painting equipment, protective gear, and cleaning equipment.

Already in the end of the 1980’s, Alfort & Cronholm understood the need for adequate system support to increase the efficiency of replenishment ordering. Leif Nyström, Administrative Director at Alfort & Cronholm, explains: “The solution that we implemented in the 1980’s allowed us to efficiently control re-order points and order quantities and to generate automatic order suggestions. The solution must have been quite advanced for its time and it has served us well for decades. Still, it was clear that the old solution had reached the end of its life cycle and it was time to replace it.”

After evaluating several different solutions, Alfort & Cronholm chose RELEX. Leif Nyström explains: “Purchasing and inventory management are, of course, of pivotal importance in our line of business. Consequently, our requirements on the new replenishment solution were high. We wanted to find a solution that included replenishment and forecasting models that were at least as good as those in our old system and that would enable us to update and maintain control parameters and create accurate order suggestions with a minimum of manual work. Right from the beginning, RELEX’s solution felt like a good choice for us.”

The co-operation with RELEX started with a pre-study which was conducted in the spring of 2010 and continued with a pilot implementation in the fall of 2010. RELEX’s solution was rolled out in the spring of 2011.

RELEX’s solution has been integrated with Alfort & Cronholm’s ERP-system, IFS. IT manager Joakim Keskitalo comments: “Linking RELEX’s solution to IFS was fairly simple and we could recycle parts of the integration that we had in place for the old replenishment system. We use file transfers between the systems, and the work that had to be done in IFS we did ourselves.”

Leif Nyström summarises: ”RELEX’s solution has met our expectations and has also produced tangible results. Already during the pilot phase, our inventory turnover increased. Simultaneously, we have maintained our high service level.”