Weinig Group is an international technology provider for the solid wood processing and distribution industry. It offers extensive services and system solutions all the way up to ready-to-use production plants. In addition to its headquarter in Germany, Weinig has production locations and sales offices around the world: in Sweden, Switzerland, China, USA, France, Brazil, South Africa, England, Russia, Singapore, Japan, and Australia. Company acquisitions have led to various ERP systems at Weinig Group. To support continued growth, Weinig went on the market looking for a new ERP system for its locations in China, Switzerland, Spain, France, and the USA. abas Business Software met all of Weinig‘s requirements and was successfully implemented.
„Choosing a new ERP system is not an everyday event,“ explains Alexander Walter, CIO of the Weinig Group, „in our case the demands were very high.“ An important criterion for Weinig was an international implementation methodology. Headquarters wanted a contact partner on the side of the provider who would implement the concepts from headquarters at the country locations where the new software would be used. A smooth, international coordination of the ERP project had to be guaranteed.
Weinig locations were asked to participate in the software selection process. Key users from Yantai (China) evaluated the competing software packages after they were presented. Points were awarded for functionality, user interface, user friendliness, and overall impression of the system.
Weinig found what it was looking for in abas Business Software. ABAS is uniquely qualified to successfully implement international projects. No other company has the combination of an unified partner network, strategic orientation, globally enabled software, and international implementation methodology that defines the roadmap to success. „The international abas project management won us over,“ says Walter when explaining the decision. „In international projects, different management levels must be optimally linked to each other. We wanted a central management of projects. Corporate management and project management of both Weinig and ABAS are represented in an executive committee. The entire project management was in my hands.“
Each Weinig location provides a local project manager and the abas software partner provides a project manager on site. Country project managers regularly report to the overall project manager, who in turn reports to the executive committee. Advantage of this procedure: each country‘s particularities can be optimally represented in abas ERP. In the case of Yantai, the functionalities available for China also spoke in favor of abas ERP.
ABAS made a good impression in the system presentations in both Germany and China. Ongoing maintenance costs were lower than those of other providers and abas Business Software performed best especially when total costs were calculated for the next five years.
The CIO and overall project manager for Weinig summarizes the project as follows: „the highly motivated employees from ABAS gave us the highest level of efficiency and constructive communication during the project. In the process, we even learned a lot about our own company. Project management was fast and professional, and project costs were below budget. I am sure that we would not have been able to achieve such a result with any other provider.“ In China, the local abas Partner, ABAS Business Solutions (PRC) Ltd., is also responsible for Weinig. When asked about benefits achieved, Walter replied, „Weinig China shows a clearly optimized supply chain management in purchasing, sales, and production. Up to now, purchases recorded and managed previously estimated amounts of materials and set the corresponding delivery dates manually. Now, a purchase order suggestion is automatically generated by the system using production data. That speeds up the purchasing process, ensures sufficient warehouse quantities for JIT delivery schedules, and avoids mistakes that arise from calculating manually.“
If Spanish employees identify themselves on the server in Germany when handling a spare part, all actions will then be carried out in Spanish. First, abas ERP identifies the product and checks whether it has already been created. If this is not the case, it will be imported into the system. If the customer accepts the offer, abas ERP transforms it into a sales order and sends the customer a sales order confirmation. Then the packing slip is generated and goods are sent. After creating an invoice based on the packing slip, data is then sent to financial accounting integrated into abas Business Software.
Walter sees the advantages of abas ERP primarily in its continuity: „It is now ensured that data is up-to-date at any point in time. Time saved in creating purchase orders in Spain is considerable. Communication errors no longer occur when transferring data electronically. The best part about it is that language does not make any difference. A company-wide language translation system has been integrated into abas Business Software. Another advantage is that abas Software Partner in Spain, Abas Business Solutions Ibérica, is located near Weinig‘s office in Madrid. We therefore did not have to travel very far for things like training and implementation. Next we want to implement abas ERP in France according to the Spanish model. ABAS has a software partner there as well.“
Weinig Group is an international technology provider for solid wood processing and distribution. Weinig offers extensive services and system solutions, all the way up to readyto-use production plants. In addition to headquarters in Germany, five other production locations as well as sales branches are located around the globe.
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