R+L Hydraulics GmbH
The company develops, manufactures and sales quality components for drive systems and the fluid technology: clutches for stationary and mobile applications, steep and cushioned pump brackets, aluminum oil containers as well as industrial heat exchange devices. The company which is located in the Westphalian Werdohl (Germany) emerged 2003 from an amalgamation of the both long-established companies Rahmer & Jansen GmbH and the American Lovejoy® Inc.
The company’s high standard of know-how referring to the drive systems and the fluid technology, the extensive product range and a global net of subsidiaries and distributors ensured that Raja-Lovejoy established itself successfully in the worldwide market within a short period of time.
ERP and WMS from one single source
In 2006, when the support of the ERP system which had been applied until then was suspended, the company in Werdohl searched for a new system for controlling the operational processes. We were looking for a “complete IT package”, including Sales and Purchase, Costing and Accounting. The new ERP system should particularly enable the shortest lead times and a decrease of inventory. Furthermore, it was supposed to support the customer orientation in a comprehensive way. The central significance for Raja-Lovejoy was the seamless integration of the sensitive areas high-bay warehouse and stock management with manufacturing control. Next to a perfect integration of the different systems, the partner also had to take over a comprehensive project responsibility. ORDAT did not only meet these requirements, but scored as well by being able to provide both: the warehouse management system (WMS) and the ERP system from one single source.
ORDAT.ERP managed to convince by its functions for planning and analyzing lead times. ORDAT was also able to meet the expectancies with substantial possibilities of Customer Relationship Managements and the BI functions. Taking into consideration the relevance of the high-bay warehouse, ORDAT proved itself as a competent partner in the field of warehouse management and thus it was a crucial argument relying onto their system ORDAT.ERP: “Within the shortest time ORDAT developed convincing concepts for the reorganization of the high-bay warehouse control, for a new WMS and for the future ERP System”, Karsten Reimann, authorized representative and chief financial officer at Raja-Lovejoy remembers.
Kick-off of the projects was at the end of August 2007. The actual project start was made in the middle of October installing Windows-Packaged-Clusters and implementing ORDAT.ERP. On Monday, May 5th 2008, not even seven months later, the system was able to go into the productive run together with its multiplicity of subsystems and – at the same time- with the fully reorganized high-bay warehouse. In doing so, the highbay warehouse was at standstill for only one working day – on May 2nd, a day in between bank holidays: therefore, the state was frozen on April 30th. All master and operational data were transferred via data transmission and the new high-bay warehouse control was finally put into operation.
“The implementation was very well prepared and the whole project ran without any problems,” Karsten Reimann sums up. Short time after the productive run, the fully integrated CRM system ORDAT.ERP could finally be applied. Karsten Reimann: “Now, ORDAT.ERP provides an integrated transparency starting from the customer request to the high-bay warehouse.” It was an advantage for the course of the project that ORDAT.ERP standard already covered the requirements of Raja-Lovejoy at the greatest possible extend. In the area of document generation and reporting, however, some features had to be taken into consideration: to ensure, for example, that the company was able to report the daily and concrete figures to its American holding company.
Complete Reorganization of the High Bay System
The transfer and the processing of the old data from almost all business-relevant areas required a lot of time and effort. The biggest challenge, however, was to change the existing high-bay system with its control and connection to the shelf vehicles and to materials handling from Siemens S5 to Siemens S7. Then, the Siemens S7 was supposed to work with the ORDAT.ERP applications. Together with the partner Walberer this could be implemented – partly during ongoing operations and in part on the weekends. Given that a gradual replacement of the old control was not possible, all new components were implemented and tested parallel to it and an operating command was prompted. On May 5th, the due date, the new machine and the new ERP system could be booted up and the old one was switched off.
With the multiple options in ORDAT.ERP a detailed overview about existing and actually necessary inventories has been provided. The reduction of the inventories lies in the hands of the company’s responsible employee. In doing so, the enterprise can avoid unnecessary financial strains caused by high inventory stocks or it is prevented that single articles become obsolete and useless after a long storage. For this case, ORDAT.ERP offers functions for an efficient warehouse management like minimum and basic inventories or minimum shelf-life maintenance of certain articles.
All Inclusive
Implementing the complete package of ORDAT.ERP, ORDAT also assumed the complete support service including the installation of a new Business Intelligence (BI) System and a sanction register monitors. Now, the BI system antares analyzer provides a continuous turnover and cost transparency within the company. The sanction register monitor checks regularly current compliances against the address data in the system labeling critical addresses. In addition, the sales representatives of Raja-Lovejoy can access the company network via a Citrix Presentation Server installed by ORDAT.
Being a Citrix Silver Partner, ORDAT also provided, next to its installation, the infrastructure and finally handed it over to a local partner for further maintenance. Within the realm of its services for the data and server environment ORDAT is still responsible for a fluent and efficient system operation. The whole system is designed for a maximum of security: by installing a highly performant cluster environment based on Windows Server and SQL Server 2005, it is also protected against a probable hardware breakdown.
Outlook
ORDAT.ERP is also planned for the subsidiary Newcool which can soon be registered as a future customer. It is also intended to use the Citrix installation for the external connection of a second site. The subsystem ORDAT.ERP edi shall be implemented in the near future as well. This electronic data interchange can also be applied for communicating with the parent company in the USA to which there is customer vendor relationship.
