Manufacturing and construction companies meet several challenges. Effectiveness, efficiency and transparency are key to the business processes to survive in this competitive market. 

Therefore, companies like Corus, Boliden, Kaldewei, Smurfit Kappa, Georgia-Pacific and Voestalpine Polynorm have chosen for ORTEC Advanced Planning Solutions.   

Many manufacturing companies are faced with customers that have become more demanding. Moreover, they are competing in a more and more international market, but they are themselves also operating more and more internationally. And with the availability of Internet for almost everybody, the market has become very transparent. Quality and price are still important, but it is hard to beat competitors on quality or price only. Diversification of the assortment, high service levels and short lead times are important competitive edges. 

The large diversity of logistic processes offers many challenges. Demand forecasting, purchasing raw materials, production and storage of (semi) finished goods, loading and distribution, all need to be managed and optimized to meet business objectives.

A multitude of companies in this sector, including companies that manufacture building materials, fabricated metals, packaging, plastics, primary metals and pulp and paper use ORTEC's solutions.

Logistics optimization in the customary SAP environment

Based on the European market leader for bathtubs and shower trays, Franz Kaldewei in Ahlen, Germany converted its complete transport and shipping management into a single SAP integrated logistic management system at the beginning of May 2006. ORTEC Germany took over the responsibility for the system implementation.

Five applications were integrated into one overall system and implemented under a SAP umbrella, to include:

• order picking control
• optimization of pallets
• optimization of loading space
• transport planning
• settlement of freight costs

All planning actions and result views have been integrated into the SAP R/3 surface in a clear and serviceable manner. Time-consuming jumping around between different systems and menus was replaced by a uniform “look and feel” without interface.

An integral part of the new shipping application are several SAP embedded applications from ORTEC, bundled in ORTEC LEO (Logistics Execution Optimizer).