Royal FloraHolland is a Dutch cooperative in the international floriculture sector with more than 3,700 members, 5,000 suppliers and over 2,400 buyers. It handles 90 per cent of the Dutch flower and plant trading. The cooperative processes over 95,000 transactions per day with over 24,000 different species of flowers and plants. The cooperative’s four main Dutch-based auctions/warehouse locations needed to be better connected and move from push logistics to a pull logistics focus in a fulfilment hub and network setting.
With Blue Yonder, Royal FloraHolland will be able to:
- Build a floriculture supply chain infrastructure for growers and their buyers.
- Gain more end-to-end visibility from growers (greenhouse) to hubs and their buyers.
- Transition from auction-based (supply-driven) logistics to fulfilment and order picking (demand-driven) logistics over the coming period.
“Once our digital transformation with Blue Yonder is complete, we will have a more optimal supply chain from growers to their buyers. In our strategy we are moving from a traditional supply-driven distribution process to a demand-driven order picking process, enabled by WMS. We will also organise the logistics of direct trade and clock trade in a combined process. With this new, bundled logistics, flowers and plants will be delivered to buyers reliably and quickly,” said Marc van den Boogaard, business technology manager, operations & supply chain, Royal FloraHolland. “In addition, we are looking forward to digitally connecting our warehouses and online trading platform with Blue Yonder and Microsoft Azure more and more.”
Blue Yonder’s WMS will allow Royal FloraHolland to fully digitise its warehouses and gain improved inbound and outbound visibility into shipments, as well as optimise operations to ensure accuracy, timeliness, efficiency, and compliance. The cooperative is looking to implement Luminate Warehouse Tasking next. This will further enable task optimisation through advanced algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) to eliminate congestion and improve completion throughput.
“By migrating to a SaaS-based WMS, Royal Flora will gain the ability to analyse data to make insightful decisions and acquire end-to-end visibility that will help their supply chain efficiency. Managing the expectations of all their stakeholders while simultaneously transforming the way they do business is not an easy task, but Royal Flora is doing it successfully with the guidance of the Blue Yonder team. For that, I am extremely proud of the work we are doing and look forward to seeing their transformation,” said Johan Reventberg, EMEA president, Blue Yonder.
Share