Peace of mind in a former squash centre

Cargill Cocoa & Chocolate benefits from a spare parts warehouse

Welcome to Cargill Cocoa & Chocolate’s spare parts warehouse in Deventer. Once a squash centre but now a place where countless items are kept in stock in a well-organised manner. 

itsme helped with the layout and setup so everything is ready when necessary. The impact of a malfunction is increasingly smaller while the degree of certainty and peace of mind is growing. 

Sometimes, convenience can be found in the most practical matters. Look at all those little blue containers, all neatly placed in a row up to the top of the pallet rack. Each container contains data on the item inside, including the location in the pallet rack. It’s all about convenience, says Anton van der Vlies. ‘If a mechanic removes a container, he immediately knows where to put it back. That saves a lot of searching later on.’ And it is also no coincidence that the data are on a label that can be easily replaced. ‘This works a lot better than stickers. If you remove those, there’s often still a white smudge on the container.’

‘Putting the container back in the right location saves a lot of searching later on’ 

A well-organised warehouse not only looks tidy, it’s also efficient. Anton looks around with a satisfied expression. As Cargill Cocoa & Chocolate’s reliability engineer in Deventer, he is responsible for the long-term dependability of the production facilities. Rest assured that this environment helps with this. The warehouse used to include two squash courts and the prominent red lines are still visible on the walls. Now, the space is occupied by pallet racks lined up neatly in a row. Bright light beams down from above on the broad aisles. If there is a need for spare parts at Cargill Cocoa & Chocolate, they can be found here, right next to the production site. The advantages are obvious, which is also clear to Robin Veldhuis, itsme’s account manager who is paying a visit to Deventer this morning.

‘A lot can be found right here on the shelves, which eliminates delivery times. It’s all about capitalising on certainty in a timely manner and preventing risks. In that respect, this really is the epitome of excellent anticipation.’

Insight into every part

How does a spare parts warehouse like this come about? Anton takes us back to September 2017, to his first working week at Cargill Cocoa & Chocolate. One of his first meetings is with itsme, which has been providing the VMI system for the grab stock here at the Deventer production site for some time. The collaboration is going well; the required items are always at hand. So the organisation wants that certainty for the spare parts as well. 

Cargill quickly zeros in on the former squash centre, which it was already using as a storage space. Anton requests order data from suppliers, loads it into the product information system and thus handles the administrative and digital part. And while he and the technical service mechanics are cleaning up the old squash centre, itsme Connected Business tackles the physical layout of the new warehouse. Among other things, this involves regular meetings between Anton and Lizette Matthijsse, the logistical commercial consultant at itsme Connected Business.

‘Lizette took the time, brainstormed about the layout of the warehouse and gave recommendations about things like the SSI Schäfer shelving racks. Her support was instrumental.’

The item database keeps growing

Cargill Cocoa & Chocolate has been making the most of the new spare parts warehouse for almost eighteen months now. At the start in March 2018, it included approximately 800 items; around one year later, the count stood at approximately 1,300. Anton emphasises that this number is still growing. ‘You can think of the warehouse as a continuous process. The more items that are added, the more certainty we have. We know what is registered and written off and we always directly see the status of the latest stocks and benefit from interconnection between an item and the installation component. All this ensures that we’ll never be out-of-stock. And because we only work with original parts, each repair is always immediately done correctly.’

‘The bigger the item database, the smaller the risk of a prolonged downtime’ 

Admittedly, the new work method did require some discipline, Anton says. ‘But now, everybody knows how much we get in return. And even though selecting and uploading 800 item records took me quite some time, the result is considerable. The bigger the item database, the smaller the risk of a prolonged downtime. Malfunctions now have far less impact. On the contrary, we usually forget them rather quickly. And itsme certainly contributed to that.’

 

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