Ehlebracht AG
Ehlebracht AG

Ehlebracht AG relies on ORDAT.ERP

Ehlebracht AG: the enterprise operates in the areas of plastics and furniture function technology, presentation of goods and light technology. Almost 1.200 employees at 10 different sites, eg. Enger, Herford and Berlin, generated 243.1 million German Marks in 1999 The high-end form parts from plastics and metal processing are, for example, applied in the automotive industry, for household devices and in light constructions. Anothe segment is the business line „New Media“ which emerged by introducing two new products on the market: „ProTexx“, an innovative CD/DVD packaging which was awarded with the German prize „Product Design 2000“ as well as CD/DVD business cards. The production site is the subsidiary „E2 Plastic“ in Herford.

Flexibel and Reliable with ORDAT.ERP

Ehlebracht produces „ship to line“ on a daily basis and received many awards as SUCCESS supplier/system supplier. Data connections via EDI with key accounts, a gapless warehouse technology and a continuous flow of goods are some of the prerequisites for the constant performances
Due to these requirements of Ehlebracht AG for an ERP solution the company decided on chosing ORDAT.ERP in 1993.

Important criteria were the great logistic concepts, a connection to the company data acquisition, the multi-client capability for all subsidiaries of the corporation and the multiple-plant organization. Particularities of the ORDAT.ERP installation at Ehlebracht was advice in decision making if there were enough in-house capacities for concrete orders or if this had to be supplied by external sources, a sequence optimization of orders as well as the connection of electronic scales given that the amount of pieces are determined by weight.

On the occasion of introducing the area „New Media“ the Ehlebracht AG decided to equip its subsidiary „E2 Plastic“ with an e-commerce platform. In this way, a more efficient range of services was supposed to be offered for business transactions and, at the same time, to support the local sales activities more offensively. The objective of the new trading location online was to enable the customers to enter their purchase orders into the PPS system and to track their delivery dates including information about the delivery status. Thereof the company pledged to achieve a more comfortable order handling, a higher order quality and the reduction of the order handling costs.

Ehlebracht chose the application of the e-commerce module ORDAT.ERP online because it met the following demands:

  • no expensive, error-prone interfaces to the ERP system
  • clear and user-friendly surfaces and the installation of a secure system protected by a firewall

Within four weeks only ORDAT.ERP online was installed by the system consultants of ORDAT. The major part could be covered by the ORDAT.ERP online standard application; only a company-specific product search and a special purchase order page were developed and the design was adjusted to the one of „E2 Plastic“.

Additional Value thanks to ORDAT.ERP

With ORDAT.ERP online Ehlebracht has the possibility to integrate customers and vendors via the Internet into the workflow of the existing ERP system. Thus, functions are possible which are not available in a simple shopping cart.

These include:

  • the access to customer orders in order to give customers information about the progress and status of their orders in real time and
  • the direct access to product data in order to avoid a redundant data maintenance between the ERP and shopping cart system.

The processes at „E2 Plastic“ have been extremely facilitated and accellerated since the implementation of ORDAT.ERP online. Thus, the complete order entry has become unneccessary. After the customer has added products to its cart, the order is automatically transferred to the order stock of the ERP system. Due to the possibilities for the external users to track the process of the orders via the Internet themselves, additional, time-consuming phone calls are ommitted as well. In case of occuring problems the additional information leads to a more effective communication with the suppliers and/or customers. The advantage of this integrated solution consists in the automatic generation of the basic data of the e-commerce solution in the ERP system and thus no additional maintenance expenses accrue.

The daily system maintenance effort is limited to the check of the firewall and of the processes for the database.
The access authorization is designed in the way that only one user has to be entered by Ehlebracht per each customer. This user is entitled to add other users for his company, to modify or to delete within ORDAT.ERP online.