Feeder manufacturer Chemex Foundry Solutions has fundamentally overhauled its annual inventory process. What used to work with paper lists, handwriting, and subsequent manual entry into Excel now runs fully digital. The result: inventory duration cut in half, significantly less staffing effort, and a noticeably higher level of data quality.
Chemex Foundry Solutions was founded in 1974 as a subsidiary of Hüttenes-Albertus Chemische Werke GmbH and today belongs to an international network of around 1,800 employees in more than 30 countries. At its headquarters in Delligsen, Lower Saxony, Chemex develops and produces specialized feeder systems for foundries worldwide — including the patented Tele-Feeder with innovative telescoping technology.
First Inventory Serves as a Wake-Up Call
When Philip Deubner, responsible for inventory management and logistics at the Delligsen site, carried out his first stocktake at the end of 2022, he encountered the following classic scenario: counting teams moved through the warehouse in pairs — one counted, one wrote. The results ended up in binders and were then manually typed into an in-house Excel tool that was supposed to transfer the data into SAP. A process with multiple media discontinuity and potential sources of error: illegible handwriting, transposed digits during data entry, no automatic validation of material numbers.
On the last working day before Christmas 2022, the team waited hours for an error-free SAP posting. The transfer kept failing — too many materials, too much complexity. Eventually it worked. The inventory result was correct. But Deubner made a firm personal resolve: the counting process had to become more efficient.
Digitalization as the Logical Next Step
The prerequisites for a digital solution had long been in place: all pallets and items already carried Data Matrix codes. What was missing was the consistent use of this infrastructure during stocktaking — for example through a mobile SAP solution.
An additional requirement had also appeared on the agenda: with the introduction of batch management — on top of around 6,000 to 7,000 different material numbers — manual data capture would have become entirely impractical. The decision was therefore made to switch to the SAP standard inventory process — carried out with mobile scanners: inventory documents are created centrally in the system and processed directly via the scanners — no paper, no manual entry, no media discontinuity. As early as 2023, the first inventory run using this approach went significantly more smoothly than the previous year. In 2024, three full stocktakes followed.
Transparency Through the Inventory Control Station
A particular highlight is the database layer through which every individual count can be traced without gaps. Since Chemex operates only a single storage location across the entire plant in SAP, this layer enables precise spatial tracking for the first time: before each count entry, the shelf is scanned using a Data Matrix code — the system then knows exactly in which part of the building, which shelf unit, and which shelf column a material is located. This greatly simplifies recount procedures and also impressed the auditors:
"The auditors never asked for a certificate. What mattered to them was: is every scan documented — and can I prove the identity between what was scanned and what is in the system? Both of these we can show very easily via the database layer."
Results: Half the Time, Fewer Staff Required, Higher Quality
- Inventory duration cut in half: from 4 days of pure counting to around 2 days for counting including SAP posting
- Error sources eliminated: no manual data entry, automatic validation of material numbers
- Audit-compliant: complete scan documentation met all requirements — with two different auditing firms
- Scalable: three full stocktakes were carried out in 2024
Conclusion
For Chemex, the digital inventory process was not just a process improvement, but the entry point into a broader digitalization strategy. Mobile maintenance, the digitalization of goods receipt, and further SAP processes are on the agenda — and other sites within the HA Group are already benefiting from the experience gained in Delligsen.
Know-how
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