One software solution for everything

Metzgerei Kleiber, headquartered in Memmingen, uses the winweb-food ERP system as an ordering, information and analysis system, among other things, for its nine branches, which receive fresh products every morning – as do external wholesale customers.

See, smell and taste what makes our meat and sausages so unique. Visit one of our shops, ask us, put us to the test.

This is how Michael Kleiber GmbH, headquartered in Memmingen in the Allgäu region, advertises itself on its website. And indeed, if you put this claim to the test and visit one of its nine branches in the Allgäu region or Swabia, you will not know where to look first: pork neck, red brawn, chuck tender or sliced kidney sit alongside bratwurst, steaks and chops. Numerous homemade salads, ready-to-cook dishes, sausages and cold cuts round off the product range.

The animals come from farmers whom Kleiber has selected and who produce exclusively for the butcher in Memmingen – who can therefore also have a say in how they are raised. “We slaughter the animals ourselves and use everything,” says Michael Kleiber jr. “Only through close cooperation across every stage of meat production can we succeed in producing meat and sausages that taste good, are healthy and can be enjoyed with a clear conscience,” says the junior managing director.

No more stand-alone solutions

Every morning, the company’s nine branches and external wholesale customers receive deliveries. To ensure that logistics run smoothly and that all products arrive on site as fresh as possible, the Swabian company works with Winweb. The IT specialist has been providing industry-specific solutions for managing business processes for over 20 years. “Previously, we only had standalone solutions,” says Kleiber Jr. “That eventually caused us problems because it resulted in interface issues. We therefore wanted a single software solution that could do everything and support us as effectively as possible,” explains the 35-year-old, who was well aware that his company’s IT needed to move away from individual solutions and towards standardized processes. “Together with Winweb, we are now working to implement our specific requirements,” says Kleiber Jr.

The responsible employees at the branches use specially developed order templates on touchscreen PCs, which are installed in every store, to order the products they need for the following day directly in winweb-food in real time. „This makes entering orders much easier and more reliable, as well as much faster“, says Kleiber jr. Even order quantities from the previous week and the same day a year earlier can be displayed to provide branch managers with concrete decision-making support. Kleiber’s few key accounts order the products they need for the following day by 5 pm via telephone, fax or email, and these are entered manually into the winweb-food ERP system.

Better order picking

At the Memmingen headquarters, night is turned into day six times a week when, at 3:30 a.m., the ordered items are picked and weighed with the help of winweb-food and the goods issue is recorded in winweb-food. During order picking, the orders from the individual branches and wholesale customers are first displayed on the touchscreen: processing row with item, quantity ordered and quantity processed, as well as batch number.

The order is processed product by product until the required quantity for the respective customer has been reached. If the scales ultimately measure a value that differs from the weight calculated by the ERP system, winweb-food issues a warning. This is intended to ensure that exactly the quantity ordered is delivered. “In this way, winweb-food forces us to be more accurate”, explains Kleiber jr. Early in the morning, the goods are then delivered using the company’s own trucks. “The changeover in order picking was certainly tough”, recalls Kleiber jr., as the processes had been firmly established. “But little by little, things are settling back into a routine”, says the junior managing director, who knows that winweb-food can simplify and improve many processes. Data collection has become much more detailed and the error rate has fallen significantly. “That naturally saves costs”, says Kleiber jr.

Everything from a single source

While the ordered products are being picked at the Memmingen headquarters, winweb-food automatically sends all item information including the prices, which were calculated at headquarters the previous evening, via the internet to the scales in the nine branches. At the end of each sales day the sales are retrieved online from the scales based on the receipt data and used for branch accounting and analyses. For fiscal compliance winweb-food maintains a complete archive of all transactions. Kleiber pays particular attention to the analysis of individual branches: Sales at each store are checked daily and data such as the number of customers and sales per customer are compared with the same day of the previous year. Promotional activities can also be reviewed using winweb-food's branch analysis.

In addition, the sales management system displays information including average prices compared with the previous year. All data is consolidated in the management information system of winweb-food, where various analyses for branches and bulk consumers can be viewed. “We are only at the beginning of our collaboration with Winweb,” says Michael Kleiber jr. “We intend to gradually migrate all processes to winweb-food. This will certainly still require some effort, but then we will finally have everything from a single source.”     

www.kleiber-metzgerei.de
www.winweb.de