In retrospect, it was a pretty slave time - to put it in Jutland. Demand was minimal. On the other hand, the blacksmiths we visited at that time wanted everything but what we could provide. The flip side of the medal is that today, by fulfilling a large part of the wishes, we have obtained a solid ERP system, which without large investments covers the needs of small and medium-sized production companies for efficient planning, management and production.

One of the important features that has come along the way is a "real" stock - with batch management, picking, purchasing, costing and more.

We have many customers who use inventory management - for their stocks of anything but steel. So far, all steel registration has been about managing batch numbers and certificates on steel purchased for orders. Steel that was left over was at best registered as scraps. Recently, however, we have encountered companies in the steel industry that buy into stock - and have steel in stock for 2-digit million amounts. It requires inventory management, along with certificate management, to avoid losing money on such a warehouse.

Therefore, we have now combined the two solutions, so that we can now offer smith companies a steel warehouse where the steel is registered with a certificate, where the warehouse access can be done automatically through integration to a number of major wholesalers and where steel can be reserved and subsequently used on specific orders. . All with full documentation.

The main challenge

Our major challenge has been that steel of a given type, dimension, quality and length has different item numbers and designations at the various wholesalers. Therefore, automatic receipt and inventory registration require that we be very careful in matching deliveries from different wholesalers. To that end, we have created a steel directory that matches the steel types with each other across wholesalers. In addition, Tracelink gives the company the opportunity to give the material a name of their choice. In this way, we ensure that every steel supply leads to an increase in the stock of the right steel type.

Similarly, a bill of lading for a given production will reserve the right material in the prescribed amount - and when steel is finally picked from the warehouse, typically for cutting, Tracelink records which batch (ie which batch number) the steel is taken from. In this way, Tracelink always reflects the physical inventory.

We are convinced that our new warehouse can provide a much more efficient use of the purchased steel, because it is no longer a question of whether we have or may not have a "stump", but instead a question of exactly how much steel we have of a given type, divided by what lengths.

September 2019