
Safe and reliable confirmations
STILL, leading provider of tailor-made, internal logistics has automated the processing of order confirmations for the procurement of spare parts with tangro software, making process flows faster, more transparent and more reliable.
Initially, they had in mind a solution working along the lines of a ‘Confirmed as ordered’ button. But contact with tangro showed that there’s much more to the process than that: OCR detection, automatic transfer of content into SAP, comparison with purchase order and storing the order confirmation for the purchase order. And this is exactly how order confirmations are now processed at STILL. Jan Grunwald, Analyst Supply Chain at STILL, explains:
“By automating the process with tangro, we are now able to make more efficient use of our time while also achieving high levels of transparency and certainty throughout purchasing."
“And because deadlines are in the system early on, customer satisfaction has risen too.”
Every year the three materials planning teams handle 200,000 active spare parts from more than 1000 different suppliers. 70 percent of order confirmations arrive via email and have to be entered in SAP and processed. On average, this process took 120 seconds, which with a volume of 100,000 order confirmations a year means a total of 2000 hours of work.
Automation has now made the entire process faster and more reliable.
tangro detects the purchase order number, enters the volume, price and deadline, compares this information with data from the purchase order and uses a traffic light function to indicate whether everything is OK, items don’t match up or data is missing. If the details in the confirmation are correct, the materials planners can post the document immediately in SAP. If not, they add the missing data or correct the contents.
Even confirmations which cannot actually be read by the computer can be processed with tangro. The solution works by taking the purchase order number, extracting the corresponding purchase order data from SAP and prefilling the boxes in the processing screen with these values. Again, the planners don’t need to type in anything, just simply compare the values used with the document image of the order confirmation. If everything is OK, these documents are posted instantly too. Jan Grunwald:
“It’s much faster than having to enter everything manually."
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IndustryProvider of tailor-made, internal logistics
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HeadquarterHamburg (GE)
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SubjectIncoming order confirmations
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Volume of documents100,000 order confirmations/year
