METRO Group’s category management updates planograms two or three times a year on average. The frequency depends on how short-lived the product range is, i.e. how frequently Category Managers have de-listed products and positioned innovations in the shelf. Revising planograms used to be very time-consuming. Category management had to manually adjust all existing planogram data with current product and sales figures: Which items are new, which are no longer in the shelf? What is changing in the planogram as a consequence? Since category management in the sales divisions Real and Metro Cash & Carry is producing its planograms with the support of the Shelf Management System’s data base, shelf plans are automatically being fed with the changes about articles carried. This will significantly accelerate the time needed to create planograms and mean that they can be updated more frequently.

The Category Manager specifies which product belongs to which region and which store. This information is relayed to the Metro Data Warehouse System (One MDW) via the Metro Merchandizing System (One MMS). MDW in turn supplies the RMS data base with any changes in the articles being carried in the night batch processing. The information input includes product master data including GTIN numbers (formerly EAN), supply routes and packaging dimensions as well as dynamic data such as sales.

Listing changes made by the Category Manager are sent to the RMS data base from One MMS via MDW. That means: if a Category Manager de-lists a product today, he can trace this in the planogram of the category the following day. To do so the Category Manager uses the "SF Hotspot" feature in Spaceman to access the planogram in question. The products changed in the merchandize system are displayed in different colors. Black means these items have been deactivated in the merchandize system. Green indicates that the dimensions of the product have changed. In addition another display on the screen shows all newly carried products. Category management revises the planogram according to the screen prompts: deleting de-activated products, accepting new dimensions, positioning the new products in the shelf and then saving the program.

After the users have made the necessary changes at assortment group level, they change to the planogram of the maintenance level, also called the maintenance group. Every maintenance group is defined by a region and a product range unit. The product sequence of the assortment group is kept in the planograms of the maintenance group. Newly listed products which users positioned at assortment group level are automatically imported into the respective planogram of the maintenance group, at the same place as in the planogram of the assortment group. The software also deletes all products in the maintenance group planograms which have been deleted at assortment group level. This means that laborious manual adjustments to categories and maintenance groups are no longer necessary. The only point that is not fully automated yet is importing de-listings. Users can ignore the de-listing if it is based on a wrong decision and enter it into the Metro Merchandizing System (One MMS). The Category Manager forwards the checked and up-dated planograms from the maintenance level to the stores.

Metro Group’s objective is to further enhance the features of the Shelf Management System. RMS has been linked to the Software CMplus since mid 2005. METRO Group Category Managers use CMplus to manage product groups efficiently. The software creates suggestions for the product range, which Spaceman can then immediately check from a space point of view. Category Managers ensure that the number of newly listed and de-listed products strike a balance. Thanks to Spaceman’s visualization the Category Manager can easily spot if the assortment carried fits into stores or if other products have to be included or discontinued. The objective is to avoid overloading shelves.