**5. Case study**

Sample firm: As an initial partner for the first application of this maturity assessment, a company was selected which is engaged in providing warehouse facilities for pharmaceutical products. This company's business is best described as a 'pre-wholesaler'. According to this business type, the selected company is providing logistical services for pharmaceutical companies. Typically, this includes warehousing and transportation of pharmaceutical products from the manufacturers to wholesalers, hospitals and in some cases to pharmacies directly. The business of pre-wholesaling is special, as the supplier of such services does not take title to the products they are storing, and ownership stays with the manufacturer until delivery is complete. Furthermore, pre-wholesalers do not maintain customer relationships with the intended recipient of the product, but with the manufacturers who pay a fee for the services used.

This company describes itself as very engaged in the digital transformation of its operations and has already undergone some small steps and test projects. Therefore, this company seems to be well suited for the application of the maturity model proposed. The company is described by roughly 100 million dispatches p.a. and about 200 employees. Since its establishment, the company is engaged in improving its customers' storage needs and providing various value-added services.

Data collection: To conduct an initial maturity assessment, the authors had to develop a questionnaire. As explained in the foregoing sections, the main building blocks of this questionnaire include warehousing processes as the main rationale for describing the maturity dimensions and corresponding maturity levels. In total, the questionnaire considers six questions per dimension. Regarding all dimensions (7), the total sum of questions equals 42 questions. The questions are directed to learn more about the specific state of maturity in the dimensions along the warehouse processes and can be detailed as follows:

*Autonomous Warehousing: Development and Application of a Maturity Model DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.104184*


The qualitative results that would be collected by this survey allowed the achievement of the principal objective.

Findings: The semi-structured interview allowed for capturing information not only tied directly to the questions involved but also information that helps to understand contextual aspects.

Regarding the first question, respondents stated that the entire process documentation for the unloading process is stored digitally and accessible through a quality management system, which equals the highest level of maturity (5 of 5). Furthermore, the entire documentation is updated once per year through a predefined and participatory process. Every 3 years, all documents and instructions are subject to revision, guided by an external auditor. As assumed, the process documentation is indeed being used for internal advanced training. Apart from regulated measures, spontaneous initiatives like CIPs1 or unexpected other events could trigger an update within the documentation. The company acknowledges room for improvements regarding the use of digital signatures for increasing safety and accountability.

As for the second item of the questionnaire, the respondents explained that the flow of material within the process of unloading trucks is mainly mechanically supported by equipment such as forklifts. Regarding this information, the company reaches 2 out of 5 possible maturity degrees. The respondents further explained that they were pursuing a small number of initiatives to test a higher degree of automation using automated guided vehicles. In view of the maturity of the flow of information, diverse results were registered. Firstly, the interviewees pointed out that there is still a data island within the company since a considerable amount of data is not digitized at all and is handled by using and sharing handwritten memos (maturity level 1). At the

<sup>1</sup> Continuous improvement process.

same time, the company relies on an enterprise resource planning system (ERP) that enables and supports business processes and communication with clients (maturity level 2). A further nuance could be registered, as some limited operations are also using streamlined electronic data interchange (EDI; maturity level 3). In turn, no unequivocal maturity level could be identified but rather a distribution over three different maturity levels became apparent.

The next item covered the maturity levels of technology applied in the process of unloading trucks. The respondents listed the different technological solutions currently in use, while the researchers connected them separately with maturity levels. A diverse picture began to emerge, starting with equipment of types such as forklifts, video surveillance and entry doors – which were counted in the category of least maturity, as they were all manually operated. The second level of maturity could be seen in equipment such as a packing machine, scanning devices and several displays (used for showing order-related information to shop-floor workers) as well as a semi-automated, web-based IT-system for the provision of slots for incoming trucks. In this category, the technologies assisted humans in their work but were not yet fully automated.

Regarding the next section, the maturity of the workforce was investigated. Since there was a total of 18 employees involved in this subprocess, the assessment turned out to be rather difficult. After several talks, the assessment team and the respondents concluded, that the 4th maturity level (5 as highest level) would be suited the most as it applies to more than 90% of the 18 employees. It was clarified that the job profiles were diverse and differentiating requirements were in place. The 18 employees can be distributed to different sub-areas within the unloading process, 2 of them to the area of ambient storage, 3 workers are in charge for regular daily business (e.g., administrative work), 6 persons to the area of goods receipt and 7 more were engaged with shopfloor activities, such as operating forklifts.

The last section of the semi-structured survey addressed the maturity of the organization, respectively selected important organizational features. The first item of interest points to the importance of internal coordination between functions and roles. The interviewees declared that most of the coordination takes place in the form of rather irregular internal meetings. Although in some cases, the meetings are scheduled and follow pre-defined protocols. In sum, the maturity level for the coordination falls between levels 3 and 4. The second item of this category directs to the state of the company culture. Like the foregoing assessment, the respondents explained that the company culture is mostly open, where potentially interesting external contributions—such as innovative technology—are openly acknowledged, while the discussion on such aspects is rather rare. The respondents were not completely unambiguous, and some pointed out that the assessment might also hit the 4th level of maturity here, which corresponds with slightly increased awareness towards valuable contributions. Finally, the item of resource management and availability was highlighted. Again, it was laid out that in most cases, the request for additional resources is often characterized through rather complicated procedures but could also be sped up, if there is a critical demand to meet.
