Case Study: From Fragmented Stockrooms to Unified MRO Strategy – How Royal Avebe Standardised Spare Parts Management with SPARROW

About Royal Avebe

Royal Avebe is a global leader in potato starch and protein production, headquartered in the Netherlands. With a strong focus on sustainability, innovation, and operational efficiency, Royal Avebe operates multiple production sites across Europe. As part of its continuous improvement journey, Royal Avebe sought to harmonise its spare parts inventory, processes, and planning systems across its core facilities.

Overview

SPARROW’s partnership with Royal Avebe began in October 2024 with a quick scan pilot. What started as a small-scale evaluation quickly evolved into a company-wide transformation. Within months, Royal Avebe expanded the project from inventory counting to process optimisation, and ultimately signed a three-year contract covering the full suite of SPARROW modules.

The Challenge

Royal Avebe’s key issue lay in the disconnected setup of its production sites:

Three core sites in the Netherlands located within 50 km of each other
Each site had its own stockroom organisation, inventory policies, and data structure
Not all spare parts data was integrated into SAP yet
No centralised planning or visibility across sites, despite overlapping operations

This decentralisation led to inefficiencies in stock management, procurement, and planning—especially as all three Dutch sites are producing similar outputs but managing MRO separately.

The Solution

SPARROW worked with Royal Avebe in an agile, phased approach:

Conducted a quick scan and pilot in Q4 2024
Provided the main platform for a manual inventory count and verification process in early 2025
Deployed SPARROW.Stock to digitise inventory and improve visibility
Introduced SPARROW.Clean to standardise spare parts data for SAP readiness
Rolled out SPARROW.Plan to align stock planning and enable shared inventories
Supported the consolidation of planning across the three core Dutch sites

“I particularly value SPARROW’s pragmatic and phased approach. They didn’t just bring software, but worked with us step by step to build a sustainable process across all sites,” says Sander te Riele, Manager Planned Maintenance at Royal Avebe.

Key Outcomes

Full adoption of SPARROW’s modular platform, from SPARROW.Clean to SPARROW.Plan
Signed 3-year contract within 9 months of first contact
Integrated spare parts data across three strategically located Dutch sites
Foundation laid for shared inventory planning and future SAP integration

By aligning processes, systems, and data across nearby production sites, Avebe is not only streamlining operations—but also positioning itself for more data-driven and connected maintenance and procurement strategies.