RÖCHLING INDUSTRIAL OEPPING GMBH & CO. KG

Industry

Plastic industry

Department

Company-wide use

Region

Oepping, Österreich

The Customer

Since its foundation in 1683 as a leather factory in Rohrbach, Röchling Industrial Oepping has continuously developed into a leading manufacturer and processor of plastics, high-performance plastics, ceramics and rubber-graphite. The production company, which is part of the international Röchling Group, specialises in the manufacture of high-quality wear parts for the international paper industry, general mechanical and plant engineering, the agricultural industry as well a spare parts for the alpine industry and liftings screws for sewage treament plants in the waste water industry. In addition, the company, which is based in Upper Austria and has around 350 employees, is a competent partner for semi-finished products as well as drawing parts and customised solutions made of engineering plastics. Röchling Industrial Oepping has successfully evolved from a regional supplier to a global player thanks to its innovative spirit and openess to progress. In this context, the digitalisation of the company is being driven forward in a targeted manner.

Initial situation

A few years ago, Röchling Industrial Oepping decided in favour of data-driven corporate management using a business intelligence solution. The aim was to automate the ETL process, analyse the data flexibily and visualise it clearly. The initial focus was on visualising sales and sales trends as well as target/actual deviations based on ERP data from Microsoft Dynamics NAV for management and sales staff. 

Solution

A part of the evaluation of suitable BI solutions, Qlik Sense Enterprise was chosen as the client-managed solution. The decisive factor was the wide range of options for flexibly analysing data from any system, even at a granular level. For the introduction of Qlik and application development, the production company brought in ppmc, which specialises in customer-specific business intelligence solutions for medium-sized companies. The certified Qlik Select Partner impressed with its technological expertise, experience and geographical proximity, which ensured personal co-operation. Following the implementation of Qlik and the conncection of Microsoft Dynamics NAV as a source system, ppmc developed a sales application as a pilot project. This allows sales and their development over various time periods as well as deviations from target values to be mapped and analysed according to dimensions such as customer, salesperson, external sales partner etc.

The Result

"The application enables us to see at a glance whether we are achieving our sales targets, where there are deviations and why, so that we can take targeted action to get back on track", reports Simon Lindorfer, full-stack software developer at Röchling Industrial Oepping. "We very quickly realised that this option could create added value not only for sales, but in all departments." This led to the decision to roll out Qlik in the company. "ppmc provided us with comprehensive support and a great deal of expertise", amphasises the software developer. "At the beginning, we formulated our requirements, ppmc developed the applications accordingly and then handed them over to us. In the meantime, we have expanded our Qlik expertise and continue to develop the applications independently. In the event of more in-depth questions or personnel bottlecks, ppmc is still available to us with help and advice on Qlik, even at short notice."

Not only information from the ERP system is now analysed, but also machine data as well as data from a time recording system and a production management solution. Around 70 employees from various departments currently work regularly with Qlik applications.

Qlik is used in production control, for example. The production managers and foremen in the plant receive insights into the capacity utilisation of the machines either ad hoc or via daily e-mail reports. This information serves as the basis for precise detailed planning that is tailored to the current capacity utilisation. "When an order is produced, the times of the individual work steps are stamped", adds Simon Lindorfer. "With the help of a Qlik application, we can retrospectively determine whether the estimated time required for the work steps was met or exceeded. This enables us to calculate product prices more accurately, which is important to ensure our profitability."

Quality assurance uses Qlik to collect key figures such as the complaint rate at product or product group level and can thus draw conclusions as to whether optimisation is required at machine or raw material level.

IT uses Qlik to visualise the hardware setup and data sources. In addition, key figures from Projectworx such as the duration and progress of IT projects are visualised in Qlik. Access to the various Qlik applications is controlled by an authorisation system. An application is currently being developed for the process management team to map and analyse specific KPIs for the sales process.

"We can no longer imagine life without Qlik", concludes Simon Lindorfer. "Instead of interpreting Excel tables once a week, as we did in the past, Qlik automatically provides us with daily updated figures. We can see directly where there are target/actual deviations. This allows us to plan and work in a more targeted and efficient manner - whether in terms of labour efficiency or quality. Particularly in production, greater efficiency means we can process more orders and, of course, generate more sales as a result."

About ppmc

ppmc has been a recognized expert for customer-specific business intelligence solutions and digitalization consulting since 2007. Customers from the Alpine Rhine Valley and the DACH region as well as international companies receive comprehensive support from ppmc, from consulting, licensing, installation, development and training to support in the areas of data integration and data analytics.