Technology

Dutch floral coop taps Blue Yonder for greater operations visibility, supply chain infrastructure

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May 12, 2022

Royal FloraHolland, a Dutch cooperative with more than 3,700 members, is deploying Blue Yonder technology to transform warehouse and digital fulfillment capabilities.

The global flower auction cooperative is implementing Blue Yonder's warehouse management solution to build a floriculture supply chain infrastructure for growers and buyers, increase end-to-end visibility from the greenhouse to the buyer and transition from an auction-based logistics system to fulfillment and order picking logistics, according to a press release.

Royal FloraHolland works with 5,000 suppliers and over 2,400 buyers, and handles 90% of the Dutch flower and plant trading, according to the release. The company processes more than 95,000 transactions per day with over 24,000 different species of flowers and plants.

The cooperative's four Dutch-based auctions/warehouse locations needed to be better connected and move from a push logistics to a pull logistics focus a hub and network setting, according to the release.

"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 organize 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," Marc van den Boogaard, business technology manager, operations and supply chain, Royal FloraHolland, said in the release. "In addition, we are looking forward to digitally connecting our warehouses and online trading platform with Blue Yonder and Microsoft Azure more and more."