In just one year, the winweb-food ERP system was implemented at Fleisch- und Wurstwaren Korch in Radeberg.

Radeberger Fleisch- und Wurstwaren Korch and the software company Winweb demonstrated how quickly a complete system change can take place – naturally during ongoing operations. The on-site kick-off appointment in Radeberg was on January 14, 2019, and live operation started on January 6, 2020. “For a company of this size with around 400 employees, processing about 65 tons of meat per week, no small matter“, says Winweb Managing Director Willi von Berg. Time for a review after a good year with the new ERP system winweb-food. Felix Alber still remembers his first period as the new Managing Director at Radeberger Fleisch- und Wurstwaren Korch well: “I started here in September 2018 and by December I was already totally annoyed by the existing ERP system: no consistency, atypical operation, various modules, extremely slow and lousy support“, Alber lists.

Top priority ERP system

And these are figures that reflect profits or losses at the push of a button, and for the former management consultant they are the be-all and end-all of corporate management: “Today nothing works on gut feeling anymore, it works on figures. You need transparency for sound decisions, to be able to answer questions such as: Where do we make money and where not?”, Alber sums up his attitude. And so his decision was quickly made: “We urgently needed a new ERP system.” After several conversations with potential software companies, it was clear: “The conversations with Winweb were really good, you could tell immediately, they know what they are doing, and on top of that they have a great deal of experience in our industry”, says Alber. Of course there was skepticism among the workforce at first, but Alber made the topic an absolute top management priority: “Just saying, you take care of it, that does not work; everyone has to join in, such a changeover is a team effort”, explains the 47-year-old.

He also made it clear that he has a control instrument with good,Reliable data need: “Otherwise it is like driving without lights: In the next curve, you fly off the road.”

A project team was quickly set up around Chief Controller Dirk Oswald: “I fully supported the changeover from the very beginning, even if it was a tough time in terms of workload.” Also involved was master butcher Frank Schönfeld with his good rapport with colleagues in production. “From an IT perspective”, says Alber, “the changeover was rather trivial. The decisive and time-consuming question was how we wanted to map our processes - we thought about that for months.” Support came from Pascal Eckerscham, Senior Consultant and Project Manager at Winweb, who was able to contribute his many years of experience: How do you map the production process so that it comes as close as possible to reality? How is what posted? How are recipes created and how can the Batch traceability be seamlessly documented? How does an order run from start to finish? “At the beginning, it was like dry swimming,” Alber recalls.

Data revised

Next, the data from the old system was not simply transferred, but was revised and cleaned up in detail and only then imported into winweb-food. “Cleaning up the master data and categorizing all the information was particularly important”, says Alber. Controller Oswald remembers this time well: “While operations still had to run with the old system, we set up winweb- food at the same time.” Thanks to the good preparatory work, everything could then be switched from the old system to winweb-food all at once in January 2020. “That was what was special about this project for us”, says Pascal Eckerscham. “Since all areas interact, all processes also had to function across the board from day one of the changeover.” The fact that this worked well was certainly also due to the fact that the implementation at Winweb was efficiently coordinated through a mixture of online and on-site appointments.

Since then, the ordered quantities in goods receipt have been compared with the delivered actual quantities and at the same time QA inspection plans have been queried. Subsequently, the invoices for the received goods are checked in the system, in the integrated Document management system assigned and transmitted to financial accounting.

(Part 2 follows)

Radeberger Fleisch- und Wurstwaren Korch GmbH, founded in 1991 and originating from a butcher's business in Silesia, processes and sells 140 tons of ham and sausage products per week with around 400 employees. Annual turnover amounts to around 50 million euros. The products are offered nationwide under the "Original Radeberger" brand in self-service shelves, but are also sold at fresh food counters in regional retail and in the company's own branch network. "Original Radeberger" has a high brand awareness of up to 90 percent in the eastern federal states.

www.korch.de
www.winweb.de