Musical instrument manufacturer optimizes supply chain management
- Production planning and operative procurement base decisions on real-time simulations
- Despite parallel SAP launch at several companies: project on time and on budget
Munich, Trossingen, Bad Berleburg, September 24, 2019: With valantic’s support, the musical instrument manufacturer HOHNER Musikinstrumente GmbH (HOHNER) and its sister company Sonor GmbH (SONOR) have introduced the Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) software wayRTS (Real Time Simulation). Both of these longtime manufacturers of harmonicas, percussion instruments, and Orff instruments now have much more agile, cross-plant demand and production planning with maximum transparency along the entire value-creation chain. Thanks to the wayMES add-on module, the production departments also profit from this transparency. Delivery capacity and delivery reliability have been improved consistently with the valantic software, and safety buffers in the form of time and inventory have been reduced gradually.
Together with its strategic partner in Taipei, Taiwan, KHS Musical Instruments Co., Ltd., both HOHNER and SONOR are now running an inter-company SAP ERP system. For HOHNER in Trossingen, this meant replacing the previous ERP system and the associated waySCS APS software. “Anyone who has reaped the benefits of an APS system like waySCS doesn’t want to go back to planning with in-house ERP solutions. We were able to convince the management that with the introduction of the real-time successor wayRTS, we could further improve our planning processes and extend them to SONOR,” reports Frank Brändle, Director of Process Management at HOHNER Musikinstrumente GmbH. The valantic Competence Center for Supply Chain Excellence, which is also the developer of the real-time software wayRTS, was commissioned to implement this APS solution. wayRTS draws its data directly from SAP and also writes planning data back to it. The fact that the data-leading SAP system was not yet reliably available due to the ongoing migration was a special challenge in this project.
“Cooperation with the project team at HOHNER and SONOR and the Taiwanese SAP consultants was very open and good. The wayRTS export interface proved itself as quality control for the migration of the data to SAP,” reports valantic project manager Christian List. “Correct data is the basic requirement for IT-supported planning processes, and together, we have succeeded in achieving the necessary fine-tuning in these two parallel migration projects.”
wayRTS and wayMES encouraged planning precision and process stability at HOHNER and SONOR. With these projects, the amount of work required for planning and control was reduced significantly. Now, planners can simulate inquiries and order scheduling as scenarios in real time without disturbing production. After completing the simulations, the selected variant can be taken over into the productive system. Another advantage: Thanks to the fact that everyone is now using wayRTS, in the future, the planning teams in Trossingen and Bad Berleburg will be able to step in for one another as necessary.
Update: 26. May 2021: More information about the press release “HOHNER plans commodity flows with valantic’s wayRTS” can be found in our success story: “HOHNER and SONOR optimize Supply Chain Management“.
