Maruhiro Department Store Upgrades Food-Ordering System

Tokyo, September 01, 2011

Maruhiro Department Store Co., Ltd. and Fujitsu Limited today announced that they have recently put into full operation a jointly developed upgraded food-ordering system for use in Maruhiro Department Store's food department.

The process behind the system upgrade began with suggestions for operational improvements from Fujitsu's Field Innovators⁽¹⁾, the team responsible for providing support in the form of making front-line operations visible and transforming business processes. Based on this, Maruhiro's head office installed Fujitsu's packaged solution, GLOVIA smart for Mass Merchandisers, while each Maruhiro store installed the MIND EOB ordering system. These two systems were then linked together.

Since the rollout of this system, Maruhiro's ordering accuracy has increased dramatically and ordering time has been cut by more than 30%, greatly improving efficiency and business effectiveness.

Maruhiro aims to reform its business operations with continued efforts to further bolster sales effectiveness and competitive strength.

Maruhiro Department Stores, a group of community-based stores, boasts the biggest revenues in Saitama Prefecture. However, in the face of a long-term slump in consumer spending the company was looking to make a fundamental shift to an operations-type format that would bolster its management effectiveness.

As part of this effort, the company partnered with Fujitsu to undertake a top-to-bottom review of its food department's ordering system. Fujitsu's Field Innovators made the company's operational processes visible, identified issues to be resolved, formulated proposals in response, and conducted an extensive system revamp that included 21 measures to optimize the ordering process.

The system, which brings together two of Fujitsu's strengths—the retail-industry savvy of its Field Innovators and its system-integration technology—comprises, at Maruhiro's headquarters, GLOVIA smart for Mass Merchandisers, which is Fujitsu's packaged solution that handles ordering, stocking, sales, inventory, and budgeting. This system was linked together at each store with a digital ordering system, MIND EOB, which replaced paper-based order books.

Before the change, it would take two days to update the product master sheets that listed product information such as price and vendor. Now, changes are reflected in real time. As a result, mistaken orders, such as orders for products that are unavailable due to product changes, have been slashed by more than 80%, dramatically improving ordering accuracy.

Making the ordering process visible also made it possible to reconsider the process itself, and building the new system around a new way to order has helped cut product-ordering time by more than 30%.

Additionally, because paper-based order books are no longer used for ordering, the company is using some 220,000 fewer sheets of paper per year, reducing its environmental footprint.

Maruhiro plans to continue working with Fujitsu's Field Innovators to visualize and resolve issues in its business processes, and to improve its business effectiveness. For its part, Fujitsu looks forward to supporting Maruhiro with ICT and providing it with optimized services.

In rolling out this system, Fujitsu worked with Fujitsu System Solutions Limited and Fujitsu Frontech Limited.