SUCCESS STORY – EDEKA SÜDWEST FLEISCH

ERP Data analysis in near real-time

EDEKA Südwest Fleisch gains more transparency across the value chain with Qlik Sense

“Instead of receiving Excel spreadsheets with data by email once a week, employees in almost all departments can access data updated three times a day with just a few clicks, in keeping with their individual information needs.“

Nikolai Martin Ehrlicht, project/process management, EDEKA Südwest Fleisch GmbH

The customer

EDEKA Südwest Fleisch, a wholly owned subsidiary of EDEKA Südwest, specializes in the production and sale of meat and sausage products. More than 1,000 employees ensure freshness and variety at the service counters of around 1,100 EDEKA branches every day – from Lake Constance to Saarland. The high-quality meat and sausage specialties are manufactured on a round 40,000 square meter production area at the company’s headquarters in Rheinstetten near Karlsruhe.

Solution at a glance

Initial Situation

In Rheinstetten, EDEKA Südwest Fleisch GmbH operates one of the most modern and innovative meat plants in Europe. Up to around 550 tonnes of high-quality meat and sausage products are produced there every day for approx. 1,100 EDEKA markets. Modern plants and machines combined with powerful information technology ensure optimal process chains. The CSB industry solution, an ERP software for the food industry, is used to manage the value chain: Around 800 individual processes from the areas of goods receipt, cutting, production planning and management, packaging and price labeling, storage and retrieval processes, picking, wheelie bin loading and shipping are monitored and managed online with the software in the technical and logistics control rooms.

Making data value usable

To make the large amount of valuable CSB data more efficient and flexible as a basis for business decisions, CSB System SE recommended EDEKA Südwest Fleisch use a business intelligence solution. “Until now, we only had rigid PDF reports or very large, confusing Excel files from the CSB-System at our disposal to gain insights into our CSB data,” recalls Nikolai Martin Ehrlich, who works in project/process management at EDEKA Südwest Fleisch and is primarily responsible for the project. “The data was made available at different weekly intervals by Controlling. If we had additional information needs, we either had to submit a request to Controlling or start a query via the ERP system ourselves.”

The CSB partner and business intelligence specialist Informatec had the right solution on offer with the data analytics software Qlik Sense.

Solution

Strong as a team: CSB and Informatec

In a joint kick-off with CSB and Informatec, the initial situation, requirements, goals, and measures were determined to efficiently help EDEKA Südwest Fleisch achieve more transparency about its CSB data.

CSB provided a data warehouse based on Microsoft SQL Server in order not to additionally burden the production system. Informatec set up the data jobs and took care of the implementation of Qlik Sense on the servers of EDEKA Südwest Fleisch as well as setting up the application landscape.

Regular meetings were held to keep everyone involved in the project up to date, to compare the status, and to determine the next steps.

“The collaboration between the project partners worked very well,” emphasizes Nikolai Martin Ehrlich. 

Fresh Data three times a day

In addition to the CSB data from the data warehouse, various Excel files containing, for example, groups of sales channels and delivery rhythms are imported directly into Qlik. The data is updated three times a day.

Knowledge through training

As a certified Qlik training partner, Informatec provided the necessary knowledge for the employees of EDEKA Südwest Fleisch with various EDEKA internal training courses and workshops. “We’ve benefited from the breadth of training Informatec offers. And we were strongly encouraged to continue our education to be able to further develop Qlik autonomously,” says Nikolai Martin Ehrlich. “For example, there were individual workshops on special topics such as data origin and data visualization.”

Support for the creation of evaluations by Informatec is now only necessary in exceptional cases. “Controlling has authority over the development of the evaluations,” explains Nikolai Martin Ehrlich. “In coordination with the respective colleagues from the specialist departments, the division develops evaluations adapted to the informational needs. Access to the individual evaluations is regulated by an authorization plan.”

Application Areas and Users

80 users, 5 streams, 40 evaluations

Qlik Sense is used in management, commercial management, procurement, fleet management, controlling, marketing, fresh meat production, internal and external sales, quality management, and production planning and control.

Depending on their authorization, around 80 employees have read access to 40 evaluations that are assigned to five different apps with delivery, procurement, and empties data.

Classical sales and turnover analyses from perspectives such as article, day and date, distribution channels, etc. as well as corresponding deviation analyses are available). Analyses of complaints and credit notes as well as delivery quotas and shortages are also available. Information can also be called up about which articles were bought and sold when, in what quantity, and at what prices.

Evaluations are used particularly intensively in the field sales force, with almost 50 colleagues finding out about the relevant key figures for the markets they serve.

Transparency and timeliness

With the use of Qlik Sense, EDEKA Südwest Fleisch has gained significantly more transparency about the individual processes in the value chain. “All analyses are also dynamic so that the data can be viewed at different levels of detail and from different perspectives without any effort”, reports Nikolai Martin Ehret.

In addition, current data is now available three times a day. The various graphic visualization options also ensure that the query results are easier to understand compared to the data previously only available in Excel spreadsheets. “The Qlik interface is also very intuitive to use, you can work very easily with the mouse,” adds Nikolai Martin Ehrlich. Another benefit for the project manager is the ability to export Qlik files as .pdf or .xls files and send or edit them.

The company gains important information on optimization potential from the current data, which can now be accessed quickly and easily. “Production planning can, for example, see at a glance if a key figure such as the delivery rate has changed negatively and identify the reason so appropriate countermeasures can then be taken.”

The results from the project with EDEKA Südwest Fleisch also benefit other CSB customers: Informatec developed subject-specific iVIEW templates – ready-made data models and reports that can be easily adapted to individual requirements and enable a quick start in business intelligence with Qlik Sense.

Future

Qlik expansion planned

The Qlik application landscape will be further expanded in the future, explains Nikolai Martin Ehrlich. “At the beginning of the project, we had to approach the colleagues and ask what analysis they needed. Now they come to us and actively ask whether we could also create an evaluation for them.” Evaluations are currently being prepared for the area of technology, for example. In a further project step, the logistics area will be supplied with Qlik applications.

“Qlik gives us more transparency about our COD data at the push of a button.“

Nikolai Martin Ehrlicht, project/process management, EDEKA Südwest Fleisch GmbH

Summary