Home · Solutions · Supply chain
Solution · Supply chainEvery stored set has a position, a condition and a fee. Today only the tyres are real.
Tyre season without a lost set or an unbilled shelf
Every stored set becomes one record with its position, condition and fee; robots book the season in waves, pick the day's sets by position, raise the fees on time and name the sets nobody claims.
Executive summary
Stop searching the racks for a set that has moved, and stop storing tyres nobody will collect.
The design starts with an address, not a robot.
Sets are picked in one pass down the aisle the evening before, so the first bay starts on time and the runner stops searching.
the storage invoice in each brand's DMS; the workshop diary; site mailboxes in Microsoft Outlook 365 or the SMS gateway
Business problem
Seasonal service
Tyre storage is sold as a convenience and run as a favour. It is one of the few aftersales lines with a contractual reason to see the same customer twice a year, it earns a fee, and it fills floor space the group already pays for. In most dealer groups it runs on a workbook per site and a marker pen.
The season compresses everything. Poland has no calendar rule for winter tyres, so the peak is set by the first frost and by what the neighbours are doing, and it arrives as a fortnight of telephone calls rather than a plan. Bays are full, the store has one runner, and customers who did not book turn up anyway. What a site can deliver in a day depends on how fast sets leave the rack, and nobody holds that number before the queue forms.
Between seasons the record decays. A customer sells the car and the set stays. A set is moved and the position is not corrected. A fee falls due and is raised at the next change, or never. Storage is the aftersales line where nobody can say what should have been invoiced.
How it works today
- PersonThe customer telephones or walks in; the adviser finds a slot and writes the registration on the season list
- PersonThe workbook is opened for the rack position; where it disagrees with the label on the wheel, somebody walks the aisles
- WaitingSets are pulled on the morning of the appointment, so the first bay stands idle while the runner is in the store
- Risk of errorTread depth and condition go on a paper card or nowhere, so a dispute about a scored rim is settled from memory
- PersonThe fee is invoiced when the adviser remembers, usually at the next change; a customer who does not return is never invoiced
- Risk of errorSets whose owner sold the car stay for years, because no list names them and nobody may clear a position
- SystemNext season is planned from last year's total in a spreadsheet, and the peak is absorbed with overtime
Why the current process costs more than it appears
The budget shows headcount, not what it is spent on.
- Nine minutes a set is the visible cost, and it is the wrong nine minutes: most of it goes on looking for something the group owns, inside a building the group pays for.
- A position holding tyres nobody will collect cannot be sold, and the shortage is met by ordering more racking rather than by clearing what is installed.
- Fees behave like a leak, not a loss. One uninvoiced set is invisible; only the annual difference between sets held and fees raised shows it, and nobody produces that difference.
- Disputes about condition go to whoever sounds more certain. With no tread reading and no photograph from the day of storage, the workshop pays for a rim it may not have damaged, or argues with a customer it wants back in spring.
Cost of inaction
Eight fees in a hundred and fifteen positions in a hundred are the assumptions worth arguing about, and both can be replaced by a count from your own register in an afternoon. Seventy euro stands in for a year of storage at your price list.
This never announces itself. The season is survived, the set is found eventually, the fee is raised at the next change, and when the racking fills the group orders more. The cost arrives as capital spent on space already holding tyres nobody will collect.
A plausible organisation with realistic proportions. The figures are there to be recalculated on your data; they are not a client result.
A dealer group in Poland: four brands, nine authorised workshops, one dealer management system per brand, tyre storage on a workbook per site, Microsoft 365 with Teams.
7,400 tyre sets on the racks; about 3,700 stored-set changes in each of the two seasons, so 7,400 movements a year and roughly 620 a month averaged over twelve.
Bookings go by telephone into the diary, positions come from a workbook the rack contradicts, sets are pulled on the morning, condition goes on a card, and the fee waits for the next change.
The store, not the ramp: one runner per site at the peak, positions that have to be searched for, and a booking pattern unrelated to what the store can produce in a day.
One record per set with position, condition, tread depth and fee due; booking waves sized to each site's bays and store throughput; pick lists in position order the evening before; fees raised on the contract date; a monthly list of unclaimed sets.
In the modelled case the season is booked before it starts rather than answered as it happens, 93 hours a month return to the desk, and the racking is let to paying customers. Modelled on the assumptions above, and counted at no client.
Proposed solution
The design starts with an address, not a robot. Every rack position gets an identifier, and every stored set becomes one register item: customer, registration and VIN, position, tyre size, tread depth at storage, a photograph of each wheel, the fee and its due date. It sits in the DMS where there is a dependable place for it, in Microsoft Lists where there is not.
Robots then take the three jobs the season makes impossible by hand. Before the peak one builds booking waves from occupancy and site capacity, so invitations arrive in the order the store can serve, and each is checked against the customer's channel consent record before it goes: anything carrying an offer rather than a notice about their own property needs consent for that channel. In season a robot builds each site's pick list in position order; between seasons it raises every fee on its date and reconciles the register against the vehicle base.
Nothing reads a document or reasons about anything. The one judgement in the flow belongs to a person: what happens to a set nobody claims.
UiPath Orchestrator time and queue triggers and credential store; UiPath Integration Service connectors for Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Outlook 365 and Microsoft OneDrive & SharePoint; UiPath Action Center actionable notifications in Microsoft Teams; Microsoft Lists version history; Power BI as a Teams tab
The position scheme and register, the wave planner sized on bays and store throughput, the consent check per message and channel, pick lists in position order, fee raising and chasing, the unclaimed-set review, the Power BI model
Each brand's DMS for the vehicle file, the diary and the storage invoice, by API where the vendor offers one and otherwise by UI automation under the robot's account; the SMS gateway through UiPath Connector Builder
How the automated process works
- AutomationEvery stored set is one register item; nightly a robot reconciles it against each brand's DMS and flags a vehicle that has left the base or a position two sets claim
- AutomationSix weeks out, a robot reads occupancy and site capacity, builds the booking waves and checks each customer's channel consent record before anything is sent
- AutomationThe first wave leaves the site mailbox or the gateway with a slot window and a booking link; no answer means one more wave, then the adviser's call list
- SystemA booking, however made, lands in the workshop diary; the set is reserved against the slot and its position is locked
- AutomationThe evening before, each site's Teams channel receives tomorrow's pick list in position order, so one pass down the aisle produces the whole day
- PersonAt the counter the adviser records tread depth and photographs the wheels into the register; the technician and the adviser decide what the tyres need
- AutomationThe returning set is booked to a position, its fee is raised in the DMS on the contract date, and unclaimed sets become a monthly Action Center review
Human-in-the-loop model
Automation handles
- The register: positions, occupancy, conflicts and the nightly reconciliation against each brand's vehicle base
- Wave planning against capacity, the consent check per message and channel, invitations, reminders, the call list
- Pick lists in position order, fee raising and chasing, occupancy and revenue reporting
People decide
- What the tyres need: the technician on the ramp and the adviser at the counter, from the wheel in front of them
- What happens to a set nobody claims: the aftersales director, from a list with the contract, the fee history and the notices attached
- Storage terms, fees, wave sizes and which message may go on which channel: the aftersales director, with counsel on the classification
Before and after
Systems and integrations
The stack is deliberately short: one engine, one execution layer, one place where a person decides.
Inputs
- the storage register in Microsoft Lists
- vehicle files, customer records and the diary in each brand's DMS
- rack and bay capacity per site
- the channel consent record
Automation layer
- UiPath Orchestrator
- UiPath Robots
- UiPath Integration Service
- UiPath Action Center
Target systems
- the storage invoice in each brand's DMS
- the workshop diary
- site mailboxes in Microsoft Outlook 365 or the SMS gateway
- the Power BI semantic model
Human touchpoints: pick lists and wave plans in site channels in Microsoft Teams; Action Center review and dispute tasks; the occupancy tab in Power BI; the register in Microsoft Lists
Technologies used
nightly reconciliation, wave releases and fee runs on time triggers; one queue item per set; retries, credential store, run log
Apick lists into site channels, invitations from site mailboxes, the register read and written as a SharePoint list
Athe monthly unclaimed-set review and condition disputes, decided without leaving Teams
Athe register: one item per set with position, condition, tread depth, fee and due date, versioned
Athe site channel carrying the day's pick list, the wave plan and the exceptions
Aoccupancy and paid share, fees due against fees raised, wave fill, sets unmoved across two seasons
Avehicle file, customer record, diary and the storage invoice
CIllustrative economic model
Numbers you can check against your own data.
Averaging a seasonal peak across twelve months understates what a fortnight in November feels like, and that is deliberate: this table prices a year of work, not the queue. Nine minutes covers the booking, finding the position, the walk to the rack, the note afterwards and the fee that follows; €21 an hour is a fully loaded service-desk cost in Poland. Nothing was measured at a client, and the rows show capacity returned rather than posts removed.
Run the numbers on your data
An illustrative estimate from your own inputs. It models released capacity; it is not a promise of savings.
Business benefits
- Sets are picked in one pass down the aisle the evening before, so the first bay starts on time and the runner stops searching
- The season is booked in waves the store can serve, which flattens the fortnight everyone dreads without turning a customer away
- Every fee is raised on its date, so the storage line reflects the sets on the racking rather than an adviser's memory
- Tread depth and condition are recorded with photographs on the day of storage, which ends most disputes before they start
- Positions held by sets nobody claims are named every month, so the racking is let to paying customers instead of being extended
The management view
- Occupancy per site and per rack, live: how many positions exist, how many are let, how many hold sets that moved in neither season
- Fees due against fees raised, per site and per month, which gives the storage line an expected value to be compared against
- Wave fill against capacity before the season starts, so overtime becomes a September decision rather than a November surprise
- One register for nine sites survives the storekeeper's holiday, and every movement is dated and attributable
Board-level KPIs
Security and governance
Where the data sits and who can see it.
- Each robot signs in to a brand's DMS under its own account, permitted to read the vehicle file and to write the storage record and the invoice, nothing else; the Orchestrator credential store holds its password, not the workflow
- Photographs and tread readings are personal data on a customer's record: they stay in the group's Microsoft 365 tenant, the robots that write them run from the European Union region of UiPath Automation Cloud, and retention follows the storage contract
- Every message is logged with its type, channel, template version and the consent it relied on; an objection recorded at one site takes effect for every brand the same day
- No set is ever disposed of by an automation. The review produces the list, the contract, the fee history and the notices sent; the decision is a named person's and recorded as theirs
Why now
Poland has no calendar rule for winter tyres: the European Commission's Your Europe road-rules page for Poland, last updated 18 September 2024, lists none, while the page for Germany does list one. A peak no date in law creates cannot be planned from a calendar, so it has to be planned from your own racking.
Next season already has a shape you could read today, because occupancy, last year's booking pattern and the fees due sit in systems the group owns. The modelled €1,953 a month of desk work is the smaller half of what reading them returns.
The build is ordinary: Orchestrator time triggers, Integration Service connectors, Action Center tasks inside Teams, a Power BI tab. There is no document model and no agent to govern, because nothing here is improved by judgement.
Relevant executive roles
The season becomes a plan with a known peak, storage becomes a line with an expected value, and the racking stops growing to hold tyres nobody claims
The store produces the day's sets in one pass, the diary fills in the order the store can serve, and the counter has an answer about condition and fee
Storage revenue reconciles to positions actually let, and the next racking request arrives with an occupancy figure behind it
Common questions and objections
Then the register is a view over what you have rather than a new list, and the work is unchanged: addressable positions, a condition record advisers will fill in, a fee raised on its date. What almost no dealer management system does is size a booking wave against the sets your store can produce in a day.
Some will, and the plan should absorb them: a wave that fills four fifths of a day leaves room for the rest. The waves refuse nobody; they stop the same fortnight arriving unannounced.
Nor should you, and nothing here does. The review produces the sets with no vehicle in the base, the contract, the fee history and the notices sent; what happens next is for you and your counsel, recorded against the set.
When this is not the right solution
- A single site with a few hundred sets and one storekeeper who knows the racking: a clean workbook and a fixed hour a week cost less
- The racking cannot be addressed because sets are stacked wherever there is room; the physical scheme has to exist before any recorded position can be trusted
- Storage is given away with the change rather than sold, in which case the fee rows disappear and only the picking and the season plan justify the build
A question for the next management meeting
Our racking holds 7,400 sets of other people's tyres: how many of those positions earned a fee last year, and who in this group is allowed to decide about the ones that did not?
Implementation approach
A scope without ambiguity, before anything is signed.
We deliver
- A count at two sites of different brands: positions, sets held, sets that moved in each of the last two seasons, fees raised against fees due
- The position scheme and the register, with condition and tread fields advisers will fill in
- The wave planner sized on each site's bays and store throughput, with the consent check per channel
- Pick lists into site channels, fee raising in the DMS, the unclaimed-set review in Action Center
- A pilot at one site through a full season, then the remaining eight with hypercare
We need from you
- One site's storage workbook and one season of change bookings, with the fees invoiced against them
- An aftersales director for the storage terms and wave rules, plus a site director and a storekeeper
- Robot accounts for the DMS, the site mailboxes and Teams, and a decision on where the register lives
Stages
Count
Positions, sets, movements and fees at two sites of different brands
Design
Position scheme, register fields, wave rules, message classification, fee schedule
Build
Register, wave planner, pick lists, fee raising, reconciliation, Power BI
Pilot and rollout
One site through a full autumn or spring, then the rest brand by brand
Quick win. Effort depends on how many dealer management systems hold the vehicle base, whether the racking can be addressed physically before the season, and how much of the old record survives migration.
The racking is full and the storage revenue line is not.
Send us one site's storage workbook and one season of change bookings, with the fees invoiced against them. We come back with the sets that moved in neither season, the fees never raised, and a wave plan sized to that site's bays.
Count the sets that moved in neither seasonThe neighbouring process usually has the same problem
Stop learning that a customer has left only when the fourth service fails to appear in the diary.
View solution Operations & qualityService slots booked against real workshop capacityStop booking three timing belts on a Tuesday with one qualified technician, and ordering the parts once the car is on the ramp.
View solution Finance & accountingWarehouse work billed from what the warehouse actually didStorage, handling and value-added work are billed from a spreadsheet somebody rebuilds every month.
View solutionIndustries we deliver this in most oftenAutomotive retail