KONE is one of the global leaders in the elevator and escalator industry, which has sales offices across Australia and New Zealand. The company has been committed to understanding the needs of its customers for the past 100 years, providing industry-leading lifts and elevators, escalators, and automatic building doors as well as innovative solutions for modernisation and maintenance services. In 2016, KONE had annual sales in excess of 8.8 billion Euros and had over 50,000 employees.
The Solution
We developed a system that coordinates all of the data exchanges between purchasing, logistics, vendors and warehouses. Both local and overseas vendors can access the POMS/vendor website from anywhere at anytime, so the information exchange is instantaneous and effective. Orders and deliveries are now barcoded and tracked every step of the way until the project is completed, and storage costs are closely monitored. What was previously a time-consuming and manual process has been streamlined so that everybody wins.
Benefits and features
Process automation
The new purchase order management system provides a digital interface for the supply of parts required to facilitate the implementation of elevator projects and the running of the business. It allows instant feedback of order updates made by KONE such as price and quantity, records them online, and then emails the update to affected vendors. Similarly any updates made by vendors such as work date and shipping status are emailed to the relevant KONE staff and as a result any miscommunication is eliminated. Additionally, the system sends reminder emails to vendors regarding overdue orders and facilitates consignment note creation, allocation of purchase orders to cases (packages), and generates barcodes directly.
Streamlining business processes
Internal manual processes have been replaced with a simple and easy-to-use system that integrates data and provides reporting and analytics. The system also integrates with KONE’s back office ERP tool (SAP).
Informed decision making
The online reports provide real-time business status information to ensure staff are constantly up-to-date with accurate data. Reports generated include: KONE shipping reports, KPI reporting, website statistic reporting, warehouse stock on hand reports, and monthly billing reports. The site readiness (dispatch note) which is created by KONE automatically creates entries in warehouse work queues.
Security
The system provides secured vendor login and management of their purchase orders, including update of order status, estimated factory departure date, acknowledgement number, and general remarks/comments. Staff have different levels of access which provide appropriate access controls depending on seniority.
Bulk scanning
We developed a barcode scanning system which means that barcodes were quickly and easily uploaded into their application via an inexpensive mobile barcode pen (which can be cradled to a PC application). This sped up business processes as barcodes no longer had to be added manually and therefore saved staff time when receiving deliveries. Accuracy was also improved as a result of the automatic bar code reading.
Technology
The website and data warehouse is built using Microsoft ASP.NET and a variety of third party graphical components. Microsoft SQL Server 2014 database and SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) are used. SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) is used for reporting.
