METRO Group leaves nothing to chance when displaying its goods at the point of sale. The retailing group’s Shelf Management System (SMS) ensures that every item is displayed appealingly. In order to ensure that all involved parties have everything under control the SMS team has developed detailed shelf plans, so-called planograms.

METRO Group’s Shelf Management System contributes to the support of the category management process chain. It is deployed to optimize the assortment and product display and supports measures at the point of sale. Thanks to RMS Category Managers in sales divisions can visualize their product positioning at their PC with so-called planograms. A planogram shows a shot of the shelf and provides a clearer picture of how articles are actually going to be displayed. These shots are created with software called Spaceman. It is the cornerstone of METRO Group’s Shelf Management System.

Key components of the planning documents which Category Managers send to their stores electronically include

These documents instruct store workers how to stack shelves.

The Shelf Management System organizes the shelf and ensures that shelves in all stores within a sales line are stacked identically. Consumers benefit from a clear and attractive display of goods and can find their way around any Real store quickly, regardless in which city they are shopping. Planograms help store staff to stack the products. Category Managers can plan the assortment efficiently and optimize the shelf space thanks to the planograms.

Category Managers from sales divisions use planograms at three levels to decide how products should be displayed to make them appealing and boost sales. The three levels are assortment group level, maintenance group level and store level. The largest unit is the assortment group, which is also known as the category level. It consists of groups of goods which are compiled by Category Managers. METRO Group’s Shelf Management team creates planograms on three levels:

Categories are the largest unit. The category consists of groups of goods which the Category Manager compiles. Every category is broken down into maintenance groups, which are defined by using criteria such as "Region" and "Assortment Module". Region explains in which stores maintenance groups are sold. The assortment module defines the size of the maintenance group , i.e. the number of items which it includes. The store group is last level in the hierarchy. It includes planograms for individual stores.

METRO Group’s Shelf Management System (SMS) mainly operates with the support of data bases. Only Kaufhof is using SMS as a stand alone version, i.e. without the support of a data base. Every sales division imports the latest product master data and other key figures from the Metro Merchandising System (One MMS), which is connected to the merchandise management system (One MDW) via an interface. It can also upload data. The Shelf Management System recognizes if the Category Manager has listed or de-listed an item. Changes in the articles being carried are colored in the planograms at category level. Newly listed products are automatically included in planograms at maintenance level. The objective of METRO Group is to further develop the Shelf Management System and to link it to the software CMplus and the SAF System.