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.
“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
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:
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:
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.