EDEKA Südwest Fleisch
Integration of ERP and BI: Full transparency at the meatpacking plant
Staying abreast of what is going on is essential to being able to respond quickly – even more so when you supply fresh top-quality products to your customers. Aiming to keep track of the value chain in real time, EDEKA Südwest Fleisch has interlinked its ERP system with a BI solution. The integrated data is available much faster now. Plus, the system visualizes the data in user-specific, customizable views. This has been achieved by directly integrating the ERP from CSB-System into the analytics software of Qlik Sense.
EDEKA Südwest Fleisch GmbH was established in 1970 as a one-hundred percent subsidiary of EDEKA Südwest Handelsgesellschaft mbH.
Since 2011, the meat processing plant in Rheinstetten has been in operation, supplying over 1,100 EDEKA- stores from Lake Constance to Saarland with beef and pork as well as fish, cheese, and convenience products. This operation is considered as one of the most advanced and efficient meat factories in Germany where 15,000 pigs and 1,200 cattle are cut and approx. 550 tons of sausages are produced every week – on an area of 52,700 square meters. The daily incoming 220,000 order lines are handled by 1,400 employees and shipped to the customers via a sophisticated logistics system.
Controlling such a state-of-the art operation would be virtually impossible without cutting-edge information technology. For quite some time now, EDEKA Südwest Fleisch has opted for automation and digital processes. “Given the high degree of digitalization and our integrative equipment, we have already achieved a great deal - and we collect a huge amount of data. With our latest project, we aimed to access this data so we could evaluate and analyze it in accordance with our requirements,” describes CEO Edwin Mantel the task of the project team. “This is precisely what we achieved through a collaboration between EDEKA Südwestfleisch, our ERP provider CSB-System, and the Qlik partner Informatec,” adds Martin Skazel, chief administrative officer.
Visualize data from the ERP and beyond
The core of the value chain is the ERP system from CSB. Since the facility’s start-up in 2011, the ERP has controlled receiving, cutting, production planning and management, packaging and weigh price labeling (labeling), inventory entry and removal processes, order picking, loading of roller containers, and shipping. Comprehensive information on the current situation, the performance and the technical state come together at the technical and logistics control stations that monitor and control around 800 single processes.
Though the process is running smoothly, EDEKA still wished to take it to the next level by enhancing the transparency. While not every user needs a maximum degree of detail, it is important that the staff and the managers of EDEKA Südwest Fleisch be supplied with the data on the spot and in the right form. Dynamic analyses of the business data from the CSB-System and from the Data Warehouse should improve the transparency of all processes. Through a direct integration of the ERP from CSB-System and the business intelligence solution from Qlik, this is precisely what has been achieved: EDEKA Südwest Fleisch now has a dynamic, high-performance evaluation tool for production, supply chain management, and billing. An important factor for the success of this project was the experience brought in by Informatec, as this company already supported numerous ERP-BI integration projects in the food industry.
Integration as the key to efficiency
Transparency begins with data. The Data Warehouse was continuously expanded with more data that should be made available and – in particular – analyzable in real time. At defined times, the information from the productive system is moved to a specific data warehouse; for instance, sales and procurement data, machine data as well as production data.
In the course of the project, the teams have learned to double-check the origin of the data and to define the concrete views in close coordination with the dashboard users. Especially for the business management data, the calculations need to be discussed in detail with Controlling. The lessons learned will be incorporated into best-practice solutions. CSB and its partner Informatec have therefore decided to supply their customers with out-of-the-box data models and reports – called iVIEW templates in Qlik jargon – to kick-start the projects and generally reduce the implementation times.
The data is still prepared and processed in CSB’s ERP – data that is also used to verify the Qlik Sense reports. CSB Linecontrol acts as a collector and interface for the connection of machines from various manufacturers, and will in future be used to review and analyze the live data in real time. In the Qlik Sense cloud analytics software, the data from the different sources is updated and visualized in line with the requirements. For example, users in sales and marketing could display analyses of billing and sales data on their dashboards. The executive managers can see a combination of all relevant data with the option to drill down. Purchasing and material requirements planning are supplied with evaluations on coverage and goods receiving postings. The technical and production departments monitor the machine data with regard to availability, performance, and maintenance.
Capture machine data
The integration of the machines was an intense project phase. Via OPC UA interfaces, the machines are connected to CSB, and the data is collected with CSB Linecontrol – a complex exercise as the OPC UA interfaces of the manufacturers and the structure of the data transmitted are quite different.
All data of the productive systems are transferred to the Data Warehouse in accordance with a fixed schedule and updated in the Qlik Sense visualizations. As a result, the technician dashboard shows the availability of the entire line as well as the state of single equipment components (for example, production, ready, or error).
Mission accomplished
EDEKA Südwest Fleisch has now gained transparency of its business management data. “We can evaluate the live data from the CSB-System and other details fast and flexibly. This not only allows us to respond immediately, but also gives us some real eye-openers,” concludes Martin Skazel, CAO.
A sophisticated role policy facilitates the selective display of data in accordance with the authorizations of the users. As a result, the streams and evaluations are reduced, which ultimately saves memory capacities.
What’s next? Needless to say that the company will not stop here. In the second phase of the project, the logistics and empties management as well as the expansion of the procurement data will be implemented. Procurement data for cutting and production entries are further options. The configuration of the new slicer line permits a fast integration and evaluation of the data. Once this is accomplished, it certainly won’t be long before new plans are underway.
