The Ikea site visit : organisation of Saint Quentin Fallavier platform

Résumé du document

IKEA is a privately held international low-cost home-furnishings retailer. It was founded in 1943 in Sweden by Ingvar Kamprad, but is now owned by a Dutch-registered foundation, which is still controlled by the Kamprad family. This foundation, whose offices are in the Netherlands, Sweden and Belgium, is called Inter IKEA Systems B.V.; it is the owner/franchiser of the IKEA trademark and the IKEA Concept. Originally, IKEA sold pens, wallets, picture frames, table runners, watches, jewelry and nylon stockings or practically anything Kamprad found a need for that he could fill with a product at a reduced price. Furniture was first added to the IKEA product range in 1947 and, in 1955, IKEA began to design its own furniture. The company motto is: "Affordable Solutions for Better Living". At first, Kamprad sold his goods out of his home and by mail order, but eventually a store was opened in a nearby town. It was also the location for the first IKEA "warehouse" store which came to serve as a model for IKEA establishments elsewhere and on March 23, 1963, the first store outside Sweden was opened in Asker, a Norwegian municipality outside Oslo. This opening marked the beginning of a long trend of internationalization.

Extraits

[...] In order to avoid another operation, those “loading ledge” are not taken of and the plastic pallets are tied on the wooden ones. Consequently, in the platform, the system of loading ledge creates a loss in lead time performance of the supply chain. Moreover a “loading ledge” pallet on a wooden pallet takes more room than a wooden pallet alone. In spite of these two major drawbacks that counterbalance the optimization of space and the savings that are made, the total financial profit of this system on the whole supply chain is important enough to support the development of this new option. [...]

[...] To conclude, symbolizing all the operations we have described and the different areas of the warehouse, here is a sketch of the platform of St Quentin Fallavier. Focus on the organization of the IKEA warehouse 4 Major issues Lead time and productivity One of the main issues at stake in warehousing is to reduce the lead time in order to increase productivity. Currently, there is a real pressure on warehouses to follow the principle of the Just in Time (JIT). [...]

[...] Nevertheless, we noted that the new system of palletization of IKEA called “loading ledge” causes a double palletization in stocking and shipping to shops: loading ledge pallets have to be tied on wooden pallet which generates a loss of space. Palletization As we just mentioned above, one of the recent innovations of IKEA concerning palletization is called “loading ledge”. IKEA has always needed wooden pallets to unload, to stock, to load goods in platforms and shops. But these wooden pallets have to be regularly returned to suppliers to control their quality and change them if required. The cost to send back wooden pallets is very important because of their size. [...]

[...] There are three kinds of control: - The first control when it's the first time that this kind of product is received by IKEA platform. This control consists in choosing several packages of products at random and opening them to check the contents. If everything seems fine (goods are what they are supposed to all the unloaded goods will only be controlled according to the labels pasted on their packages. It also implies that goods are being weighed and measured in the PM (“Poids et Mesure”) area in order to update its characteristics. [...]

[...] This means that those 30% of goods are delivered to the sales outlets in less than 24 hours. The consequence of this is the fact that today, the IKEA warehouse is considered when 60% of its capacity is being used. The new trend is to try and ship merchandise directly from suppliers to retail outlets or CDC or, when it goes through the platform, forward freight as fast as possible. This choice of operations underlines the fact that the role of the platform is currently changing, adapting to new issues that have become at the heart of the company's priorities. [...]