Logistics and procurement

Uni­form IT stan­dards for Group lo­gis­tics

The in­te­gra­tion of the ce­ram­ics busi­ness into Group lo­gis­tics con­tin­ued in 2016, with ef­forts fo­cus­ing on a full in­te­gra­tion of re­port­ing ac­tiv­i­ties and the in­tro­duc­tion of the Geberit Lo­gis­tics Op­er­a­tion Sys­tem (G-LOS). At the end of 2016, the lo­gis­tics in­fra­struc­ture of the ce­ram­ics busi­ness com­prised 14 dis­tri­b­u­tion sites of vary­ing sizes across Eu­rope.

At the Pful­len­dorf lo­gis­tics cen­tre – the cen­tral lo­gis­tics cen­tre of the orig­i­nal Geberit – SAP EWM, a new stor­age man­age­ment sys­tem, was in­tro­duced in Jan­u­ary 2016 and de­fined as the new stan­dard for IT sys­tems in Group lo­gis­tics.

Lo­gis­tics cen­tre ex­pan­sion pro­ject on track

The lo­gis­tics cen­tre in Pful­len­dorf in south Ger­many is the lo­gis­tics hub for al­most all Geberit san­i­tary tech­nol­ogy prod­ucts. With a view to fu­ture growth and the con­tin­ued op­ti­mi­sa­tion of ex­ist­ing lo­gis­tics processes, the de­ci­sion was made in 2014 to fur­ther ex­pand the ca­pac­i­ties of this cen­tre and in­vest around EUR 40 mil­lion by 2017. In Jan­u­ary 2016, only nine months after the ground­break­ing cer­e­mony, the top­ping-out cer­e­mony for the new 19,200-square-metre lo­gis­tics space took place and the in­stal­la­tion of ex­ten­sive and com­plex stor­age and con­veyor tech­nol­ogy began. In the last quar­ter of the re­port­ing year, em­ploy­ees re­ceived train­ing on the new sys­tems and all nec­es­sary test runs were com­pleted. The pro­ject is on track both in terms of tim­ing and fi­nances, with com­mis­sion­ing sched­uled for spring 2017.

Con­tin­ued op­ti­mi­sa­tion of trans­port man­age­ment

Since the in­tro­duc­tion of in­te­grated Group lo­gis­tics in 2010, cen­tral trans­port man­age­ment has played an im­por­tant role as the in­ter­face be­tween plants, mar­kets and trans­port ser­vice providers, en­abling cost- and re­source-ef­fi­cient trans­port so­lu­tions in the process. Trans­port be­tween the com­pany’s own pro­duc­tion plants, for in­stance, is com­bined with cus­tomer de­liv­er­ies. This re­duces the num­ber of empty kilo­me­tres and in­creases truck ca­pac­ity util­i­sa­tion Strat­egy Green Lo­gis­tics. In the re­port­ing year, the im­ple­men­ta­tion of Geberit processes and stan­dards also con­tin­ued in re­la­tion to trans­port ser­vice providers for ce­ramic prod­ucts and bath­room fur­ni­ture. Fur­ther­more, Geberit’s key trans­port ser­vice providers are re­quired to re­port reg­u­larly on re­duc­tions in en­ergy con­sump­tion and emis­sions.

Ce­ram­ics busi­ness sup­pli­ers in­te­grated

Struc­tured like a net­work, the Cor­po­rate Pur­chas­ing de­part­ment is res­ponsible world­wide (ex­cept in the USA) for procur­ing raw ma­te­ri­als, semi-fin­ished and fin­ished prod­ucts, com­mer­cial prod­ucts, and ser­vices.

In the re­port­ing year, an un­in­ter­rupted sup­ply of raw ma­te­ri­als and semi-fin­ished prod­ucts to all plants was largely guar­an­teed. Tem­po­rary bot­tle­necks only arose in re­la­tion to ex­ter­nally pur­chased san­i­tary ce­ram­ics ap­pli­ances and a num­ber of ac­tu­a­tor plates made of metal.

Be­side min­imis­ing lost work­ing time as well as costs, the pri­mary pur­pose of com­pre­hen­sive sup­plier man­age­ment is to safe­guard sup­plies.

All busi­ness part­ners and sup­pli­ers are ob­lig­ated to main­tain com­pre­hen­sive stan­dards. This ap­plies to qual­ity, so­cially res­ponsible and healthy work­ing con­di­tions, en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion and the com­mit­ment to fair busi­ness prac­tices. The basis for co­op­er­a­tion is the Code of Con­duct for Sup­pli­ers. This Code is aligned with the prin­ci­ples of the United Na­tions Global Com­pact and is bind­ing for every new sup­plier. The sup­pli­ers to the ce­ram­ics busi­ness ac­quired in the pre­vi­ous year are also re­quired to abide by these stan­dards. By the end of 2016 more than 80% of the most im­por­tant 250 sup­pli­ers to the for­mer San­itec had signed the Code, bring­ing the num­ber of sup­pli­ers that had signed the Code in total to 1084 by the end of the re­port­ing year. This rep­re­sents over 90% of the Geberit Group’s pur­chas­ing vol­ume.

In 2017, a “Sup­plier In­tegrity Line” is to be launched, thus al­low­ing sup­pli­ers to anony­mously re­port via a third party any vi­o­la­tions of the Code of Con­duct for Sup­pli­ers by Geberit em­ploy­ees.