Central replenishment and forecast-based detailed planning: the long-established Austrian company Austria Email AG leaves nothing to chance. Instead, it has been relying on efficient production planning with REMIRA APS and intelligent inventory management with REMIRA LOGOMATE for many years. As one of Europe's leading manufacturers of high-quality water heaters, heat pumps and storage systems, the company not only benefits from optimal stock levels thanks to APS and LOGOMATE, but also from centralized production planning.
Austria Email is the market leader in Austria and has over 90 years of experience in enamel technology. In addition to water heaters, the company is also the only storage tank manufacturer with its own development and production of pioneering fleece insulation for large and buffer storage tanks. Last year, Austria Email produced around 195,000 storage tanks. The company supplies Austria and 25 export markets, the largest of which is Germany. Before Austria Email opted for LOGOMATE in 2008, sales planning was unsatisfactory and the warehouse had a very high stock level, recalls Martin Kreutz, Head of Material Planning, Production Planning, Work Preparation and Costing: "We had too many incorrect items in stock and were dealing with numerous planning lists. The planning simulation took place in Excel spreadsheets, and we manually compiled the minimum order and batch sizes."
Stock reduced by 30%
Austria Email's aim was to plan centrally, reduce stocks and achieve a better overview in production. LOGOMATE took over the rough and detailed planning in production planning, which significantly optimized the replenishment and planning processes. Stock levels of merchandise were reduced by more than 30%, while the availability of raw materials and finished goods increased at the same time. This left more time for value-adding scheduling work. Internal communication also improved thanks to the standardized and connected software between production planning and materials planning. Previously, these areas were organized by two completely independent teams, which had to coordinate manually and were very time-consuming. However, the multi-part production steps required more transparency and standardized figures. Thanks to LOGOMATE, overarching integration was achieved: employees were able to see at an early stage if the planning shifted and what impact this would have on the raw material. The inventory management software also shows which delivery dates are possible when customer orders are received and at which point in the material flow parts may not be available in time. This created more transparency throughout the entire procurement and production chain - sudden out-of-stock situations for raw materials were a thing of the past. Customer orders, purchase orders as well as receipts and issues from the warehouse are imported into LOGOMATE daily via an interface from the ERP system. From this, the software constantly calculates the current requirements for each item. It is also possible to check the availability of raw materials immediately and customer delivery dates can be submitted promptly. Austria Email also uses LOGOMATE to plan the customer service vehicles, as Martin Kreutz explains: "This involves spare parts such as seals, heating elements, etc., which our customer service employees need in the vehicle for a quick replacement at the customer's premises. We have a transport service manager who picks up the commissioned spare parts in Knittelfeld every day and delivers them throughout Austria directly to the customer service vehicle or to the agreed unloading point the next day. In LOGOMATE, we have selected the correct minimum stock level for each article for each customer service vehicle and let the software automate the scheduling right through to the automatic creation of the delivery documents for picking the parts."
Significantly reduced production times and costs
Austria Email has also been using forecast-based production planning with REMIRA APS since 2014. Intelligent algorithms bring together all planning data centrally and ensure reduced production times and costs thanks to reduced throughput and set-up times. The system is also responsible for set-up optimization at Austria Email. This ensures that the machines are converted accordingly depending on the product, so that successive productions of different types can run smoothly and without major time losses due to changeovers. APS also provides a realistic representation of the entire supply chain, from the raw material supplier to the end consumer. Production downtimes and overstocks are avoided just as effectively as delays and out-of-stock situations thanks to intelligent planning with APS. Automatic or manual capacity smoothing is possible for up to 24 months across all production stages.
"Due to more than 2,000 different finished products, it was necessary to control production almost centrally and not leave all planning decisions at store floor level. Even small batch sizes of 5 to 20 pieces make it difficult to optimally plan our six production areas, each with around 20 different setup criteria. APS knows all of these and planning now almost only has to react to unforeseen influences such as delays in the delivery of raw materials or machine and employee downtime",
A special feature of Austria Email is the variety of special products and the seasonal nature of storage tank production. According to Martin Kreutz, in the past the heating industry had a lull between December and February due to the weather, while at the start of the heating season in October everyone needed the hot water storage tank for installation. Thanks to LOGOMATE and APS, such peculiarities can be taken into account without any problems, which Martin Kreutz greatly appreciates: "Even the special products are not constantly ordered by our customers, so short-term production would only be possible with high raw material stocks. Good forecasting is therefore extremely important for our planning in order to be able to order or produce the right products in advance."
Photos: © Austria Email
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