Not without sugar

The new logistics system at Nordzucker relies on IoT and, thanks to geofences, Nordzucker knows an hour in advance which transport is on time. This means that the right goods are automatically delivered to the right ramp in the logistics center on time: Congestion and inefficiencies on the factory premises are a thing of the past. In addition, a significant reduction in the time window length for the trucks' stay in the yard was achieved.

Since 1838, the Braunschweig company has been producing powdered, lump and granulated sugar, among other things, from sugar beets. Napoleon Bonaparte is actually responsible for the fact that significant sugar production began in Germany in the first place: Due to his Continental Blockade, the import of cane sugar from overseas failed. However, the industry did not become really big until the 1830s, when many of today's Nordzucker locations were established. Above all, Germany's largest plant in Uelzen is home to a large service center for packaged goods, which are picked up by around a thousand trucks every month - a particular challenge for order picking and warehousing.

"We face many logistical challenges in our goal of smoothly delivering as much merchandise as possible to the customer in the shortest time possible", reports Michael Jansen, Head of SAP Standard Application at Nordzucker AG. This includes, in particular, transparency about when which truck arrives to pick up which goods. 

At peak times, bottlenecks can sometimes occur on the plant premises, depending on whether trucks are on time due to the traffic situation and whether supply from the warehouse can be guaranteed smoothly.

"Clean planning was difficult because it requires real-time transparency about the trucks and the traffic situation", explains the SAP manager. The existing external system could no longer meet the requirements. In a selection process, various solutions were therefore scrutinized.

"When we chose Leogistics, it was not just a matter of selecting a software supplier, but a strategic partner"Michael Jansen reports. It wasn't just a matter of making savings. For the company, headquartered in Braunschweig, the vision of future-proof logistics planning was also very important.

With a great deal of innovative spirit, Nordzucker has accordingly jointly tackled the digital transformation with a whole range of products from the Leogistics portfolio in recent years in a spirit of trust. 

Digitization with real-time data 

Practice had shown: From the first time problems early in the morning, a shift in the entire plan often built up over the day, so that the original planning was overtaken by reality. It quickly became clear to the project team that real-time tracking of the trucks by means of track-and-trace was a must-have, also in order to be able to adjust the time windows and thus the triggering of the provision from warehouse management in a correspondingly agile manner.

Following the implementation of Warehouse Management SAP WM and Leogistics Yard Management, time slot management and the cloud solution myleo/tnt were implemented. A central component of Yard Management is the Trans module, which contributes to efficient planning: Transport Scheduling also links all the process participants involved and ensures deep integration with upstream and downstream SAP systems. Only this overall combination enables maximum efficiency through close networking. 

Agile and close to the user

For the implementation of the project, the experts relied on elements of agile methods despite tight timeframes. The entire project was "cut into small slices" and thematically clustered. The sprints were then completed in iterative steps, and users were consulted every few weeks on the usability and functionality of the product status achieved at any given time.

With many small milestones in between, it was thus ensured again and again that the project remained in the right guard rails and that the application was designed to be user-friendly.

Today, most sites already benefit from the transportation management and end-to-end track-and-trace solution. "We started the pilot rollout at all sites in Denmark at the same time. The roll-out there and at the five German plants has now been successfully completed. Finland will follow by the end of 2022, and the roll-out in Eastern Europe is also planned.", reports Michael Jansen. The introduction takes around three to four months per site. The system components are selected together with those responsible on site according to the respective requirements. 

Magic word: Integration

A particular challenge was to connect a very wide variety of devices and applications to the system to enable automated communication between all components. In addition to desktop applications, this also included a wide variety of scanners and high-bay warehouses. It was also necessary to integrate many partners: The company works with around 40 freight forwarders in Germany alone. In scheduling, it had to be clarified where documents are "married" and tours are formed in order to secure a specific slot at the loading bay based on the time slot booking.

Precisely because a lot depends on the logistics partners, more responsibility was handed over to the logistics partners in the new solution. The partners themselves book time slots in a planning tool and reschedule them in case of problems. In the beginning, drivers still proactively accessed a mobile app to manage their entire tour. In the meantime, onboard units and telematics solutions ensure automatic recording and transmission of the respective position. The track-and-trace module myleo/tnt, for example, tracks trucks from start to finish.

In the future, drivers will be notified by push notification which gate they need to drive to on the plant premises. In the Scandinavian plants, truck drivers can use an iPad in the office to process check-in and check-out quickly and easily in a dialog. In Uelzen, where there is direct integration of the logistics solution with the high-bay warehouse, check-in takes place via the scale system.

Time window management

With the introduction of the automatic retrieval processes, the truck leaves the yard much earlier and the time window length has been significantly reduced. "Especially the sophisticated integration of time window management and warehouse management based on geofences brings very important advantages for us," says Michael Jansen. If the truck is an hour's drive away from the plant, the crossing of the first isoline already triggers the retrieval in warehouse management from a high-bay warehouse. This triggers a conveyor system to move pallets to a picking point.

Since the area in front of the loading gates regularly proves to be a bottleneck, the new system means that the scarce capacities do not have to be occupied at this point: In the event of delays, downstream trucks would otherwise already be there, but the gate with the goods from the previous time slot might still be occupied. 

The triggering of the retrieval process is therefore based on a set of rules that only allows the process to start if a time slot for the estimated time of arrival has also been booked. As soon as the truck passes the second isoline - 30 minutes away from the plant - the second picking step begins. Now the retrieved pallets are driven by forklift to the gate and prepared for shipment, as a delay at this point is quite unlikely.

IDoc and SAP EWM

Only through the interface, which specifies both picking steps, can the status of the truck and the status of the delivery be matched in Warehouse Management (WM): It is immediately apparent on the monitors if there should be a delay in shipping. As soon as the truck passes each of the two predefined geofences, the warehouse management system is automatically informed. The IDoc interface is used to trigger the high-bay warehouse, which automatically removes the goods from storage onto the staging lanes, and to move the pallets to the loading gate. The goods then only have to be packed into the waiting truck. A complex calculation in the background determines when exactly the system should respond to the geofence information for a particular delivery.

Whereas before another hour often passed after the truck arrived, now everything is already on site when it arrives.

"As part of a prototype, we receive a signal directly into the logistics solution and into the ERP system via a sensor with relatively simple technology and, of course, also for a small amount of money, which we can then process accordingly during loading. What really appealed to us was the simplicity of the solution.", says the ERP expert enthusiastically. In the integration with the warehouse management system, important truck statuses are set automatically. By means of track-and-trace as a communication platform to the drivers, the retrieval of the waiting trucks to the respective loading gates will be controlled in the future. 

Michael Jansen's team still has many plans. Nordzucker is currently working in the area of logistics execution on the integration of inflow planning for time windows in the silo loading of bulk goods and an integrated "Minidispo" in the cloud solution. After the current S/4 implementation, the current WM-based integration will also be migrated to eWM.