Oswald Kienbacher GmbH
IF YOU produce parts for VW, BMW, Daimler, MAN, Volvo or Saab you will not only have to guarantee the highest quality and absolute delivery adherence.
But a high flexibility is equally important – and for Oswald Kienbacher GmbH from Bad Hall, Upper Austria, it has been a key success factor for over 40 years. The injection moulding specialist develops and produces high-temperature and dimensionally stable plastic parts for the automotive and vehicle industry, among them also bumper attachment parts for trucks, 0A-pillar casings, wind deflectors or supporting structures for the floodlights.
„We implement on a joint basis the ideas of our customers and in doing so we always find customized solutions even for very complex challenges. Our flexibility when developing customer-specific products is one of our specialties,“ says managing director Oswald Kienbacher jun. who cannot be stopped from searching optimal solutions personally for the requests given by his customers.
The company was founded in 1965 by Oswald Kienbacher sen. – with five used presses and seven employees. Today, the Oswald Kienbacher GmbH uses state-of-the-art injection moulding machines and the latest production procedures.
Meanwhile, the product range comprehends more than 400 series articles; on 4.000 square meters production area the 50 staff members manufacture about 700.000 small parts and 300.000 bigger parts. Up to date Kienbacher is 100 percent family-owned – since 1987 the son of the founder, Oswald Kienbacher jun., is responsible for the company's fortune. In 2008 the turnover of Kienbacher was approx. € 14 million.
A good choice
For the control of business transactions Kienbacher had applied several in-house developed programs based on Microsoft Office until 2006. There was no homogenious maintenance of master and process data, all necessary documents and activities were handled individually by using different office tools. When this system could not keep up with the increasing market requirements, Oswald Kienbacher was looking for a more effective solution – an ERP system that fulfilled the individual requirements of the company and provided enough room and flexibility for future developments.
Vital points on the wishing list were a forecasting production planning, an integrated EDI management and flexible reporting options. In spring 2006 the selection process began. After a thorough market analysis ORDAT.ERP and another system were shortlisted and as soon as all options had been evaluated and checked the decision was clear: with ORDAT.ERP Kienbacher gained an integrated EDI and ERP solution with comprhensive functionality already fulfilling all formulated requirements of the enterprise by default including VMI.
„We were especially convinced by the certified competence and experience of ORDAT in the plastics and automotive supplier sector,“ reports Mario Leb, logistics responsible and CIO at Kienbacher and in charge of the ORDAT.ERP project. „During our conversations in the beginning, ORDAT came along with specialists who exactly knew what they were talking about.“
In November 2006 the implementation process of the ORDAT.ERPsystem started.
In a first step, the project team switched on the modules of Purchase, Warehouse Management, Finances, EDI and Sales/Distribution by July 2007. Production started its productive run in March 2008. In addition, Kienbacher also uses ORDAT.ERP mobile for a wireless data acquisition as well as the universal reporting and analysis system ORDAT.ERP fis.
„Given that ORDAT.ERP covered all requirements of the company by default, hardly any adjustments were necessary,“ remembers project leader Mario Leb. "The biggest challenge was the connection to our MES of T.I.G for which we developed an interface together with the producer.“
The Manufacturing Execution System by T.I.G. enters, processes and visualizes the data of the injection moulding machine in real time and thus allows the comprehensive control of the production – especially important for joint products in which several component parts are manufactured in one operation sequence. Within 4 months the project team developed an interface to integrate this system directly into ORDAT.ERP. Over this article data as well as shop order data of the connected machine are transferred daily to the T.I.G. system. The accurate scheduling and the release of the shop order are made there. After the completion of the order the corresponding data are reported back to ORDAT.ERP. In this way, the basis is set for an exact retroactive costing which enables a reliable product profit and loss account at any time and at a click of a button.
Finally transparency
In the meantime the new system has proven successfully. „Finally we have some transparency," Oswald Kienbacher jun. points out.
"All employees use the same source of information always having consistent and current data. Everybody speaks the same language. The introduction of ORDAT.ERP also created the opportunity to standardize our master data and to optimize our processes,“ adds Mario Leb.
In the wake of the project, an internal documentation of about 150 pages was created in which all determinations were written down bindingly. In doing so, the structures of the company were adjusted wherever it made sense to the structures of the ERP system based on Best Practices. Now, Kienbacher works with clearly defined processes and structured data – for a small, medium-sized company this is definetely not a matter of course.
