Without technical solution XMatik, we would not have been able to overcome problem with address records and transfer of materials to maintenance actions.
About company
Duslo, a.s., is one of the most important companies in chemical industry in Slovakia.
Throughout its history, it has developed into a fertilizer manufacturer of European importance and a global supplier of rubber chemicals.
Since 2005, Duslo, a.s., has been a part of the international group Agrofert Holding, a.s., which operates in the chemical industry, agriculture and food industry.
Background
Duslo, a.s., as well as a number of other manufacturing companies, faced problems with efficient inventory management.
The first problem was continuous growth of inventories and the second problem was a significantly higher level of inventories in the long run than average monthly consumption. In 2013, if we looked at the data purely from a financial point of view, the stock of material in the warehouse would be enough to cover two years of operation. This supply of material has often been defended by the requirement for maximum material availability.
The main causes of unfavorable situation were the management of the purchase of material:
- Duplicates in material records
- Insufficient description of the material
- Use of paper requests
Objectives
The main goal of the solution was to create an extension of the SAP system for maintenance needs. The system would complexly address the following areas:
- Extended passportization with a process of controlled approval of changes in inventory records
- Full-value maintenance planning, not only from a material point of view but also from a financial point of view
- Implementation of several functional modules to cover specific business needs
- Ensuring correctness of entered data by extensive configuration of allowed combinations at different levels of the system
- Enhanced support for approval, finish of work and workflow processes in electronic form
Solution
The solution offered by our company for Duslo is based on the robust XMatik®.NET platform. Deployments also includes an extensive analysis of processes as well as cooperation in the migration of raw data to the system. Some of this data came from the SAP system, but some other data was integrated from various sources and supplied as material in XLS files.
Through comprehensive validation rules, we managed to eliminate employees' mistakes in entering data into the system by 80%. With the use of the notification module, individual maintenance processes have been significantly simplified and made more transparent. Thanks to the integration of the Business Intelligence solution, we provided management with a tool for creating immediate on-demand analyzes across the entire information system.
We have integrated the solution with the SAP holding system, in which the area of financial accounting is still concentrated. Tens of thousands of records are automatically exchanged daily between two systems through synchronization module, either thanks to synchronous (immediately after a change in one of the systems) or asynchronous synchronization (scheduled at predetermined intervals).
Using the above-mentioned procedure, we have combined advantages of a specific solution, tailored to the needs of Duslo, with the advantages of a standardized ERP system, which offers a centralized view of the management of all companies of the Agrofert holding.
Technologies
The XMatik®.NET/MM product as a part of this platform has been enriched in recent years with more than a dozen business modules designed to manage and support maintenance processes (maintenance planning and reporting, budgets, business intelligence). Thanks to the strong configurability and scalability of this product, we were able to deliver a solution to Duslo that offers benefits of custom development at a lower price than most standardized enterprise products.
Services
Our services include distortion and integration of technological diagrams or map data directly with the system, which allows intuitive access to data through graphical interface.