Spare Parts Logistics Centre Opened Ceremoniously in Bratislava

Jungheinrich expands worldwide spare parts supply business into Eastern Europe.

More than 100 guests joined Jungheinrich AG to celebrate the inauguration of the company’s spare parts logistics centre for Central and Eastern Europe in Bratislava (Slovakia). Using an oversized pair of scissors, Dirk Schulz, head of the Jungheinrich Group’s after-sales services, and Dr. Michael Müller-Wünsch, managing director non-automotive of logistics service provider CEVA, cut the symbolic cordon at the entrance to the new warehouse. The test run has been underway since as early as September 2007—less than six months after the planning and rollout phases. Having completed the warehouse’s planning and implementation on commission from Jungheinrich, CEVA now runs the Bratislava warehouse as well.

The new spare parts logistics centre supplements the company’s existing spare parts distribution centres in Norderstedt and Lahr (both in Germany). Jungheinrich has been teaming up with outside partners for several years to supply parts from these warehouses directly to customers and its own technicians in nearly all European countries overnight. This means that spare parts ordered on a given day are delivered “in-night” to Jungheinrich technician service vehicles before they start work the next day. So far, Eastern European countries have received spare parts from the two German warehouses, which generally takes 24 hours more than within Western Europe. Thanks to the new warehouse in Bratislava, Jungheinrich service engineers in Central Eastern Europe can now also receive spare parts in the night following the placement of the order.

"Excellent service is becoming increasingly important to our customers. The new warehouse enables us to minimize customer downtime even more," emphasizes Dirk Schulz.

The spare parts warehouses in Norderstedt, Lahr and Bratislava are run centrally by Jungheinrich’s corporate after-sales services unit, which also oversees the warehouses’ dispatching, sourcing, purchasing and IT management. Order processing is handled entirely through the SAP system used by Jungheinrich. It transmits orders and delivery slips directly to CEVA’s warehouse management system. The spare parts are picked, packaged and shipped in the logistics centres.

The Bratislava warehouse has 1,500 square meters of storage space, 450 pallet slots and some 13,000 small parts slots. Every day, the new plant’s 15 employees ready an average of 320 orders encompassing about 820 items for shipping. This totals 1.7 metric tons of spare parts a day, and the momentum on Eastern European markets is expected to result in rapid growth. The performance targets are a high level of supply readiness and a 99.8 per cent punctuality rate when preparing ordered items for shipping. Extensive automation was renounced given the strong fluctuation in spare parts demand over the course of a day. "Additional personnel enable us to do a better job of covering demand spikes, which often occur in the late morning and from about 2 p.m. onwards. Automated solutions would be exaggerated in coping with the average business volume, and rendering them flexible would be very time and cost-intensive,”"says Dirk Schulz, citing the reasons behind the decision.

Jungheinrich uses environmentally friendly, resource-conserving recyclable material to package the spare parts it supplies to its after-sales service engineers. The company is aiming for a recycling rate of 75 per cent to 80 per cent for all spare parts deliveries.

Jungheinrich ranks among the world’s leading companies in the material handling equipment, warehousing and material flow engineering sectors. The company has become a logistics service provider with manufacturing operations, which offers its customers a comprehensive range of forklift trucks, shelving systems and services covering the entire field of intralogistics. Jungheinrich shares are traded on all German stock exchanges.