Catalogs for Spare Parts, Work Values, and Alternative Parts
Berliner Stadtreinigung (BSR) operates a large fleet of vehicles requiring ongoing maintenance work and repairs. Thanks to CATALOGcreator® service technicians can easily identify spare parts in the 2D catalog. Other highlights of the pilot project included the generation of work value catalogs, the warranty check of spare parts, and the automated identification of alternative parts.
Berliner Stadtreinigung (BSR) is a municipal company that values social responsibility and sustainability. With more than 5,000 employees, the company is the largest municipal disposal company in Germany. The core business is divided into waste collection, waste management, street cleaning and winter service.
The municipal cleaning has a very large vehicle fleet with 1,900 special vehicles alone, such as garbage trucks, sweepers and multicars. A total of almost 2,700 pieces of equipment – vehicles, bodies and attachments – must be serviced regularly. To make matters worse, this equipment comes from different manufacturers such as Daimler, MAN and other renowned producers.
Michael Kupper, group head of IT coordination at BSR, commented that “The handling of our spare parts identification and ordering was just not up to date.” At the time they had different sources containing important information for the fleet maintenance, such as PDF files, paper documents or fax order forms. Work value catalogs were missing completely, with this information rather maintained in an Access database.
„The handling of our spare parts identification and ordering was just not up to date.“
Michael Kupper (Gruppenleiter IT-Koordination BSR)
The municipal disposal management was already using SAP Maintenance for their work processes. The following were the requirements for an electronic catalog software:
The project goals were to enable the internal departments maintaining and repairing the vehicles to easily identify the vehicle parts and to optimize the ordering of spare parts from different suppliers. The idea was to avoid unnecessary downtime due to false identification of parts.
Today BSR offers its service staff a very comfortable process where the correct parts and work value catalog of the vehicle are assigned automatically in the SAP order. The technician branches directly from the order into the vehicle-specific catalogs.
A project highlight is the work value catalogs integrated with Service Management. CATALOGcreator® provides production planners with the “data optimizer” – a tool that copies work preparation data in an electronic catalog and outputs it as a separate catalog. Work values are standard values defined by the manufacturer for repairs, such as the installation or removal of parts. Work value catalogs are often limited to bills of materials (BOM) and usually do not contain drawings.
“We realized this project together with TID Informatik as a municipal operator pilot project. And what can I say, all of our requirements could be implemented with CATALOGcreator®,” said Michael Kupper.
To optimize the ordering of the identified parts, the company uses the standard SAP interface OCI, transferring the chassis number from SAP Maintenance to CATALOGcreator® and passing spare parts information and even work values via the shopping cart back to SAP.
The content managers at BSR continuously enter new data to keep the catalog data up to date based on the input of manufacturers and the price lists of the purchasing department. Therefore, the data quality level a manufacturer can provide today to service parts management is crucial for the purchase of new vehicles at BSR.
„All our requirements could be realized with the CATALOGcreator®!“
Michael Kupper (Gruppenleiter IT-Koordination BSR)
With the introduction of CATALOGcreator®, BSR was able to significantly reduce faulty spare part orders. Previously, a technician would identify a vehicle type correctly, for example, but accidentally use a folder with the wrong vehicle construction year as the basis for his purchase order. The result – longer downtime and higher cost. Incorrect orders of this nature are completely eliminated today because vehicle-specific catalogs are automatically assigned to the service order.
Through the introduction of electronic spare parts catalogs, BSR has not only optimized the identification and ordering of spare parts, but also the purchasing of parts. Information previously available only through experienced specialists is now stored on the catalog: purchasers are pleased with receiving suggestions on possible alternative parts or suppliers with each purchase order they create.
A special catalog of alternative parts forms the basis of this broader information on spare parts. Before the data transfer to the shopping cart, the system checks whether the parts are available from other suppliers and then hands over the information (where appropriate) to the so-called sourcing component of the SAP system.
Based on these proposals and other information – such as warranties, delivery dates, and prices – purchasers decide if they buy a part directly from the manufacturer or from another supplier. Thus, BSR ensures that during the purchasing process the best possible decision is taken in terms of economic cost-benefit analysis.
With this pilot project, TID Informatik, in cooperation with BSR, has developed a whole new area of application for electronic spare parts catalogs. Due to the large fleet, the municipal companies are faced with the major challenge of optimizing internal maintenance and service processes to reduce downtime and the resulting cost.
Vehicles from different manufacturers with numerous data sources for spare parts purchasing generate a high level of complexity in the service processing. With the help of CATALOGcreator®, BSR integrates the various data sources, vehicle information, and work values centrally into a single software solution.
Thanks to the new software solution, the process is greatly simplified for service technicians and purchasers – it is clearer and more efficient. The challenge for BSR in the future is to demand the necessary data from the manufacturers in accordance with a high quality level.
Due to this pilot project, BSR is an innovative pioneer for the optimization of internal service management with municipal operators. This is also reflected in the great interest that other cities have already shown for this pilot project.
Berliner Stadtreinigung
„We realized this project together with TID Informatik as a municipal operator pilot project. [...]“
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