This Automotive ORTEC customer is one of the world’s leading premium automobile manufacturers headquartered in Germany. At their Hungary plant, with 12,000 employees, this company produces motors and completed full vehicles.

Delivery schedules for Full Truck Loads

The manufacturer was looking for an SAP integrated software solution to optimize their SAP delivery schedules. In connection with this, the currently available transportation capacities should be used more efficiently to reduce transportation costs. Both economic and ecological goals were equally considered as part of the project focus.

• For the demand-oriented material procurement and vendor communication, the material planners in the area of transport logistics had been using a spreadsheet program. The quantities were manually adjusted in the delivery schedule.
• Immediate (express) demand and backlogs needed to be considered as part of the delivery schedule optimization as well as considering the regular demand planning.
• Particularly for the volume capacity usage (in contrast to weight capacity usage) the stackability and insertion depth of the material containers must be considered. The master data maintenance for the packing instructions and the stackability are essential.
• The previous process approach used by the planners for the execution of their daily work was extremely time consuming. ORTEC was asked to develop a solution that would support the planners in determining the demand for a vendor over an optimized time horizon by combining the demand together in transports so that the defined capacity usage for a loading vehicle would not be exceeded but would also use that capacity to the fullest extent.

ORTEC for SAP to answer complex challenges

With the ORTEC software solution it is possible for the planners to select partial quantities from delivery schedule lines/positions which allows them to maintain a balance between needed warehouse capacities and optimized transportations costs. The basis for the planning is made up of the SAP Delivery Schedules. The packing instructions and materials maintained in SAP are considered for the planning and optimization of the transports and the optimized results are then provided back to the delivery schedule. To support this process the master data (for the vendors to be optimized as well as the loading unit to be used) was adapted. The installed solution makes it possible to run the optimization in the background allowing for fully automated planning to be run.

The Benefits

All planners continue to work in the known SAP ERP environment where quick access to all SAP relevant applications and information is available at all times.

• An increased transport capacity usage ensures a reduction of the number of needed loading vehicles/units while at the same time increasing the planning security.
• The planner can verify the result by visually checking the loading graphic and if necessary, eliminate either immediate demand or backlog quantities from the optimization or change the defined capacity usage percentage.
• The needed material quantities are optimized across the delivery dates to improve the transport vehicle usage.
• Consideration of the given parameters together with adhering to the defined restrictions allows for an optimum between capital commitment and transport costs.
• The manual work required is significantly reduced because the results from the optimization can automatically be saved to the delivery schedule.
• Through the reduction of transportation vehicles (tours) needed the amount CO2 released is decreased.