What does it take to manage and plan a warehouse? In addition to well-trained warehouse specialists, warehouse facilities or transport vehicles, a reliable and intelligent ERP system is of the highest priority for a successful warehouse management. This is exactly what braintec has implemented together with TOPREGAL.

TOPREGAL GmbH is a German family-owned company which operates throughout Europe and sells shelving systems for industrial storage as well as a wide range of warehouse and business equipment exclusively online. The company manages several locations in Germany and has further branches and warehouses in the UK, Portugal and Spain.

This spring TOPREGAL is opening a new production facility on a total of 20,000 square meters in Pasewalk, the Berlin-Szczecin industrial park. "This is where the production, storage, commissioning and shipping of technically complex products to Northern and Eastern Europe will take place in the future. The operation of this new warehouse also requires an upgrade of our existing ERP system," explains Philipp Schmitt, IT manager at TOPREGAL. The order is being carried out by braintec as a specialist for ERP solutions with the Odoo business software. TOPREGAL and braintec have been working together for more than three years. "First we rolled out all basic financial, sales and warehouse processes on the Odoo Enterprise platform. Since then we have been continuously optimizing and adapting the system to our needs," Philipp Schmitt underlines.

Automatisation for an efficient warehouse management

“Our requirement was that all processes in the four halls at the new location correlate systematically with each other and as a result, the work processes can be carried out more efficiently and more simply," Philipp Schmitt describes the initial situation. For example, braintec developers expanded the existing Odoo applications to include an intelligent sales management system for incoming goods. When new goods are delivered, the ERP software automatically suggests all available empty storage bins to the users as destinations for storage. "This automation saves us a lot of time in the warehouse management. However, if our employees want to store the goods manually, this option is also integrated in the application," Philipp Schmitt says.

Tailor-made and agile extension of the ERP system

Weiter wurde das Odoo ERP-System von TOPREGAL mit einigen Modulen aus der OCA Odoo Community Association erweitert. “Odoo ist eine Open Source Software, die von einer starken Entwickler-Community vorangetrieben wird. Das heisst, dass bei zusätzlichen Anforderungen seitens unserer Kunden möglicherweise bereits eine Applikation existiert. In den meisten Fällen muss diese dann aber auf die individuellen Bedürfnisse angepasst und implementiert werden”, erklärt der zuständige Entwickler aus dem braintec Team. “Dabei arbeiten wir mit der Scrum- Methode. Anhand von User Stories erfassen wir die Erwartungen der Nutzer bis ins kleinste Detail. In den darauffolgenden Sprints respektive der Implementierung von Teilprojekten werden diese dann schnell und fristgemäss umgesetzt. Zusammen mit TOPREGAL haben wir es geschafft, diverse Projekte für die Aufrüstung des ERP-Systems erfolgreich zur Inbetriebnahme der ersten Prozesse vor Ort bereitzustellen. Hier ist unsere Arbeit aber noch nicht abgeschlossen. Bis zur offiziellen Eröffnung des Standorts gilt es, in den nächsten Sprints die verschiedenen Anwendungen weiter zu verbessern und zu perfektionieren. Denn unser Ziel ist es, immer die beste User Experience für unsere Kunden und Endnutzer zu kreieren.”