WST Präzisionstechnik GmbH - A Successful Cooperation

Implementation of the ITeanova “Production Planning Cockpit” (PPC) at WST by implementing SAP simultaneously.

WST Präzisionstechnik GmbH (WST) is one of the leading manufacturers of milled components and turned parts. 70% of production is to the automotive industry, supplying companies like Porsche, Daimler and Audi where you would find WST components in tens of thousands of cars. 42 million parts are produced every year. 20,000 tons of steel and aluminum are processed annually in the latest production machines ranging from simple single-spindle automatic lathes to multi-spindle machines as well as customer-specific assembly lines.

WST’s beginning was in the 90s in a small garage. At that time the Willmann family only produced individual turned parts with a single-spindle automatic lathe. Their initial success and the company’s continual rapid growth since then has seen production facilities being expanded a number of times to meet new increasing demand. Today 500 employees work on the site in Löffingen, Germany.

As WST grew they needed to improve their internal efficiencies in many areas and to this end decided to implement SAP ERP while also planning to double their production capacity by building an additional plant.

Outside of ERP, WST used graphical planning software which provided an overview of the numerous workplaces and their production workload only. The strength of this planning solution was to give a simple overview of the planning situation with the ability to easily manually reschedule the production however, sophisticated planning functions such as finite planning and multi-level product dependencies were not available. This meant the complex interdependencies of the production supply chain were not visible to planners, which lead to decisions which often required replanning.


Solutions Icon
  • WST Präzisionstechnik GmbH
  • Gerwigstraße 9
  • D-79843 Löffingen
  • Edelmann GmbH
  • wst-willmann.de
WST therefore established key requirements for a new production planning solution:

  • Implementation of a planning tool completely integrated into the SAP ERP system without interfaces. This would ensure the accurate and seamless management of production operations and data native to ERP itself and used seamlessly.
  • Fundamental functional support to production planners to deliver transparency in operations specifically in:
    • Capacity utilization
    • Multi-level planning
    • Internal supply of materials to production
  • A comfortable, flexible and intuitive planning logic and procedure for the planners which nevertheless reflects the complex realities within WST.

  • For long-term orders WST’s production machines are blocked for several weeks, which means that the planning of the material supply cannot be performed by each order, but needs to be performed daily for high quantity orders. Otherwise the capacity of stock for semi-finished goods in a scenario like at WST is not flexible enough and would lead to high stock levels with consequent high capital tie-up.

Why did WST choose ITeanova?


“In the course of introducing SAP ERP we compared several suppliers of integrated sequence planning systems – the Production Planning Cockpit (PPC) of ITeanova was our first choice. The functions offered together with the competence, flexibility and pragmatic solution-oriented approach of the ITeanova team with managing director Michael Bleier were what really convinced us. We never regretted this decision, on the contrary: the planning quality and concurrent accuracy has improved significantly whilst actually using fewer personnel resources.”
Alexander Beck, Managing Director, WST Präzisionstechnik GmbH

Solutions Icon

Alexander Beck

Together with the skilled team of WST, its managing director Alexander Beck and ITeanova; the solution requirements were specified based on ITeanova’s “Production Planning Cockpit” (PPC) and a development and implementation plan was established.

It took only 4 months from requirements specification to the Go-Live event in March 2016.


The cooperation of WST and ITeanova was marked by:

  • The special know-how of the WST project team for all important steps in the production area of their company.
  • The openness of the ITeanova consultants and their ability to find solutions based on a variety of experiences from other customer projects and the ability to define and develop bespoke solutions to WST’s specified requirements and their production reality.
  • The technical know-how of the ITeanova team to be able to develop suitable solutions for the range of scenarios and challenges at WST.
  • Outstanding personal relationship and trust between all of the team members involved.

During the project, the milestones were achieved within the scope and budget of the project plan. It was possible to address many complex challenges: through using processes which the PPC standard already offers to newer complex and WST-specific topics (especially for long-term orders, which cannot be accurately depicted in SAP ERP).

The software was prepared in such a way, that the planners are now supported efficiently in their difficult and complex daily business to make the right decisions for the benefit of the company.


ITeanova PPC has now been running live for more than one year and the main aims of the project have been successfully validated in the improvements to WST’s operations:

  • Support of the planners to make right-first-time decisions despite the complexities in the production area.
  • Material supply without missing parts and with reasonable interim stock levels.
  • Efficient utilization of production capacities.
  • On-Time-In-Full order completion through good planning and short lead times.
  • Development of specific logic, which dispatches long-term orders and defines the latest possible production date
  • Development of bespoke logic for WST based on standard MRP results but allowing the reschedule of planned orders within borders defined for specific order demand. The WST solution enables the planning of overlapping orders (not possible in standard ERP) where only the components which are required to a special point of time are to be provided and a very realistic and near-term delivery date can be determined.

In the context of ongoing continuous improvement, WST and ITeanova continue to hold regular workshops and discuss future enhancements. The target-oriented and harmonious cooperation of both companies continues today to improve WST’s production situation.

Read more Success Stories