How IKEA warehouses have become even safer

Problem statement

The formula of the Ikea concept is that customers can remove their products from the warehouse themselves. This provides various business and logistical benefits, but also involves risks. In a warehouse — where normally only employees walk around — it is important that safety can be guaranteed for all customers in this critical environment. For Ikea, it is therefore a top priority to be able to guarantee a controlled and safe environment for customers.

Challenge

Safety is considered a top priority at Ikea. Every day, many inspections are carried out and recorded so that a safe environment can be guaranteed. Such inspections often take place on the basis of paper forms, which of course poses the challenge of getting a comprehensive overview with all the insights. Furthermore, adding situation photos and viewing previous inspection anomalies is a cumbersome process that takes a lot of time.

A solution has been created that fully meets Ikea's needs and requirements, namely that all IKEA inspectors have easy access to an application (desktop, tablet, or mobile application) that can be used to carry out all inspections. Given the international nature of Ikea, the application must also be available in several languages so that it can be used in all European Ikea locations.

Furthermore, not only carrying out warehouse inspections is an important element for Ikea. Indeed, recording such inspections correctly is an additional goal so that it can be fully related to the wishes and requirements of the compliance department.

Solution

The solution consists of two parts; a customer portal that provides an overview of all reports that have already been drawn up, and an inspection application where inspections can be carried out in a user-friendly way. The previously developed inspection application, developed in collaboration with KVVM (part of KIWA), was the basis as an inspection application for Ikea, but differs in a few functionalities.

By using a Progressive Web Application (PWA), which means that the inspection application is developed more quickly. In addition, this implies that all kinds of adjustments can be made quickly and do not have to be made via the App Stores. In this way, easy distribution of the application can also be guaranteed. Due to the user-friendliness of the application, it is also easy to carry out an inspection with it, without prior knowledge as a requirement. With the support of a knowledge database and instructional videos, the IKEA app itself ensures rapid integration into the daily process; there is no longer any need for long training courses and everyone can get started right away.

Outcome

When launching this inspection application, Ikea immediately saw the benefits; digitizing the inspection process is immediately experienced as pleasant and functionalities, such as adding situation photos, immediately save a lot of time.

Through digitization, the data has become transparent. In addition, insights are obtained more quickly and the data will be immediately forwarded to the compliance department. This has not only made the Ikea warehouse safer, but data is also available to substantiate this.

Future

Since Ikea understands the added value of the inspection application, it is currently being considered whether other inspections can be digitized and added. Currently, the inspection application is already being used in all Ikea locations in the Netherlands. After success, this will be rolled out within Europe, and then there will be a global rollout.