On 28^th June, the Chair for Information Systems and Supply Chain Management and students from the Chair’s lecture “Logistics Management” visited the IKEA distribution center in Dortmund-Ellinghausen. From there, IKEA handles every German customer order, supplies all European IKEA furnishing stores in Europe with low-volume items and offers various other services, like after sales, purchasing and IT.

KEA has a clear vision: making their customers´ lives easier and better by providing beautiful, affordable and multi-functional home furnishing products. To realize this goal, IKEA impresses with its unique supply chain and inventory management techniques. The IKEA Distribution Service GmbH & Co.KG in Dortmund-Ellinghausen plays an important role within IKEA´s distribution network.

At the start of the field trip, long-time IKEA employee Erwin Palmowski introduced himself to the group as Erwin, gave a short overview of IKEA´s history and presented their strong, strategic goal: “IKEA is going to double its revenue until 2020”. To reach this goal, IKEA has to tackle a number of distribution challenges. For example, the modern customer wants to be able to order from every device, at all times, from any location and receive the ordered goods within a short time. This shift in customer requirements greatly affected distribution. The distribution center in Dortmund saw a tenfold increase in e-commerce orders within a few years and now serves up to 50.000 orders a day. To see how such orders are handled operationally, Erwin then took the group to the shop floor. He showed how the automatic high-bay warehouses and racking storages are operated – holding more than 800.000 pallets in total – and how to deal with defect packaging and other issues.

If you want to be part of an international company with a positive team spirit, IKEA is the right place for you to do an internship, write your Bachelor or Master thesis, or work in logistics and supply chain management. IKEA´s website provides further information.