On the 6th of February 2019, 18 SuLo members took the opportunity to visit JYSK at the head office in Braband, Aarhus.
The program of the day started at 13:30h with a warm welcome by Louise Munkholm Bendsen. Louise gave us a short introduction to JYSK, JYSK Nordic in particular, and the superordinate Lars Larsen Group, named after its famous founder Lars Larsen. Louise introduced the separation of JYSK Nordic, JYSK Franchise and “Dänisches Bettenlager” and the different countries and regions each of the companies covers.
Heine Sort, Flow of Goods Director, followed with a presentation about the work and organization of the flow of goods department. He started by explicitly explaining the challenges JYSK as a retailer faces and the importance of Supply Chain Management, through which JYSK can add value for its customers. He talked about the growth strategy and the importance of growth for the company. Compressing JYSK’s supply chain into its essential parts, he managed to descriptively explain to us challenges like the long lead times from their suppliers in Asia and seasonal fluctuations in demand. Additionally, Heine explained the organization of the Flow of Goods department and each part’s tasks, skills, and challenges. Answering a question from the audience about the relevance of IT in today’s jobs, he ensured us that a combination of the business understanding on the one hand and a skillset in IT, on the other hand, are what is needed by companies like JYSK.
The next presentation was offered by Amalie Rosenvinge, newly promoted as Supply Planning Team Leader. Amalie told us about her journey from an intern to a student assistant, then a Forecast and Replenishment Planner and now Supply Planning Team Leader. She explained the tasks and projects she worked on. A focus was on the integration and implementation of new software to support planning and decision-making, as this was one of her biggest projects and challenges at JYSK.
Niels Hald Kristoffersen, Process Improvement Specialist in one of JYSK’s biggest distribution centers, talked about the challenges JYSK faces in its distribution centers. As mentioned above, JYSK follows a strong growth strategy, which means, that capacities in the distribution centers always have to keep up with the growth and rising number of stores to supply. Niels told us about the huge project to build and extend the distribution center and provided us with some facts about capacities, amount of orders processed and others regarding the distribution center. Furthermore, he explained the challenges that came with the introduction of the online store and concepts like “Order Online Pick Up in Store.”
We thank JYSK for the opportunity to get to know the company and tasks, challenges and projects about logistics and supply chain management.
