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Neat! apsolut implements SAP Business Network Supply Chain Collaboration at Kärcher
Company
Kärcher
Branch
Cleaning equipment for private and commercial use
Products
Hard floor cleaners, steam vacuum cleaners, steam cleaners, scrubber dryers, sweepers, pumps, watering systems, water recycling equipment, vehicle cleaning systems
Number of employees
16,000
Turnover
3.3 billion euros
Headquarters
Winnenden, Germany
Websitewww.kaercher.com
Greater Efficiency and Transparency in the Supply Chain and between Kärcher's Own Plants
“Looking ahead to the project, we expected to talk a lot more about technical issues,” Jana Rauland, Project Manager for SCC Implementation at Kärcher, remembered. “In fact, we talked a great deal more about processes. This actually allowed us to identify deviations in the modes of operation at the different plants, better harmonise processes and optimise our performance significantly.”
Beside this consideration of both technical and process-related aspects, apsolut was also able to contribute valuable experience from numerous reference projects. This allowed the project team to successfully implement SAP Business Network Supply Chain Collaboration, SCC for short, taking into account numerous customer-specific variations.
„From the very start, apsolut took our special requirements and idiosyncrasies into account”, explained Linna Krasnikov, the employee responsible for the SCC system at Kärcher.
„Every time we came up against an unexpected challenge during the course of the project, apsolut immediately showed up possible options to resolve the issue. We always knew to what extent we had freedom of movement within the constraints of the cloud solution.”
The new tool was implemented for two ERP systems, with process modules PO Collaboration, SA Collaboration, Return Deliveries, Labels, Invoices as well as the Quality add-on.
Kärcher established real-time data exchange with its suppliers and has achieved great time savings with respect to order confirmations and shipping notifications. Time spent on manual tasks could be reduced significantly for return deliveries as well as quality and defect notifications among other things. There is now much greater transparency with respect to statuses and open operations relating to purchasing and payment transactions as well as quality notifications. Apart from that, Kärcher enjoys further benefits from the SCC implementation. apsolut thus provided active support with defining the digital processes for packing instructions. And remarkable benefits also materialised at a higher organisational level: It was possible to harmonise the processes at the total of four pilot plants in Germany, Italy and Romania, which had deviated significantly from each other in part, and the plants are now in regular communication.
All those involved directly in the project emphasise the transparent and flexible way of working as well as the open and honest communication within the small team as decisive success factors. Following the successful system implementation, the focus now is on onboarding the suppliers, and there are also plans for rollouts to further plants.
Implemented tools
SAP Business Network Supply Chain Collaboration
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