Otto Brandt

Deliveries speed up wirelessly

Warehouse is a focal point that has a crucial effect on business productivity and customer satisfaction. The wireless, real-time ADF Online designed by Optiscan enhances the warehouse operation of Otto Brandt Group.

The Otto Brandt trade name is typically associated with Honda motorcycles in Finland. The family business also represents Honda small engines, outboard motors and ATVs. The product range also includes Polaris ATVs and snowmobiles, Terhi boats, Arai helmets and Ligier light quadricycles.

The Group´s retail dealer and partner network extends to all Finland, and the Bike World business chain operates also in Tallinn.

Success in four generations

When the motorsport enthusiast Otto Johan Albin Brandt started a small sports store in Helsinki in 1905, he probably did not expect his enterprise to grow during the next four generations into a prosperous concern that employs 150 people with a turnover of more than 120 million euros.

If Otto Johan was visiting the Group´s central supply in Vantaa today, he might be thoroughly amazed.

There are even 16 900 shelved items, and each day around thousand warehouse transactions take place. The staff taking care of all this includes only nine people.

Swiftly and accurately

- It is our duty to ensure that every retail dealer, after-sale service and private customer is supplied with the products they need as fast and reliably as possible, Logistics Manager Lars Grönlund from Otto Brandt Group points out.

Along with the sales figures from new gears and vehicles, an at least equally important part of Group´s business is the sales of spare parts and equipment.

- The customer must be able to rely on us delivering even a most unique part quickly and safely. We represent products the life cycle of which lasts decades at best, Grönlund indicates.

The deliveries must work out faultlessly as long as the motorcycle or other vehicle, motor or engine imported by Brandt Group is in use.

Wirelessly in real time

- Our warehouse operation is systematically developed to fulfill the rising challenges. In a few years the number of routine transactions has risen from 150 000 to 230 000 per year, Grönlund illustrates.

The global purchasing, transport, warehousing and delivery chain of Otto Brandt Group is managed with an activity control system now integrated with wireless stock control solution ADF Online which is operated by handheld terminals.

- Easy to use, no papers are needed, the process has become streamlined, unnecessary working steps and errors have been taken off, Director of Finance and Administration Katri Leppäniemi lists benefits of the new tool.

In ADF Online solution, the stock worker receives data on products to be picked and ordered into the handheld terminal. The terminal informs the worker where to go and what to pick next. The worker signs the order as accomplished with a barcode, the use of which both speeds up the work and reduces the risk of errors.

- When the data are available in the stock accounting in real time, it will also eliminate the need to take an inventory separately. When the stock status is known all the time, no separate calculations are necessary any longer, Leppäniemi adds.

Preparing for the future

The implementation of ADF Online running on a centralised server has succeeded without problems.

- Thanks to ADF Online, training has become faster as well. Now it takes only a few hours to give orientation for a new employee, Grönlund notes.

Leppäniemi gives full credit to Optiscan´s experts who have fitted the new handheld terminal tool as a seamless part for the activity control system of the entire Group, and their teamwork with the activity control system´s codifier has been flexible.

- When selecting the system analyst, we also emphasised the solution´s applicability to be updated to fit our future needs. Constructing logistic systems is a long-term task, and after the basic investment has been decided upon, it must fulfil also the future requirements, Leppäniemi and Grönlund stress.
Regarding ADF Online´s options, they say that implementing voice recogition may become necessary later.