The challenge
In 2016, a large Dutch retailer (over 4500 employees, billions in revenue) was looking for a central place for its supply-chain logic. The calculations were complex: rules around availability, lead times and allocation that are queried by several channels at once. The requirements were demanding:
Volume: millions of requests per hour, with peaks around campaigns and seasons.
Integration: close coupling with the existing ERP backend, which remains the source of master data and stock.
Availability: 99.9% uptime, because both internal planning and external sales rely on the service.
What we built
Wercstat developed a Java web service that performs the supply-chain calculations centrally and delivers them to several consumers at once:
Internal supply-chain planning: applications use the service for planning, allocation and deliveries.
Own web shop: visitors get up-to-date availability and lead times, straight from the same calculation.
Large business customers: integrate system-to-system with the web service for their own order processes.
By concentrating the logic in one place, every channel gets the same answer to the same question, without the rules having to be maintained in multiple places.
Service dashboard for customer service
On top of the web service, a user interface was built for customer service. For each request, the dashboard shows in detail which rules and data led to which answer. When an employee gets a question from a customer, it is immediately clear where a lead time comes from, and the answer can be given with supporting evidence.
Ten years continuously in production
The web service has been running in production since 2016 and has undergone various functional changes over the years, without availability ever being compromised. To this day, the web service serves a wide range of internal and external consumers, with the same reliability as on day one.
Partnership
This case shows that Wercstat builds more than ERP systems: even where the core is a high-volume integration component, with strict requirements for scalability and availability, we deliver software that keeps running for years and keeps moving with the business.
A similar challenge in your organisation? Get in touch for a conversation.