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Success Story: Schöchl Yachtbau, Mattsee - Austria
Schöchl - Quality in Boat BuildingThe innovative and comfortable boats and yachts of Schöchl Yachtbau make them a household name with leisure and sport sailing enthusiasts. The joinery business, formed around 1870 by their great-grandfather, manufactures boats and yachts of the highest quality at the Austrian Mattsee as it’s done now for over 50 years.
The brothers Gerhard and Manfred Schöchl could decide a large number of international regattas themselves and took the Austrian dockyard over in 1995.
In this highly competitive trade, the modern trend-setting technology of the ships are appreciated not only in Europe and environs but also in the Americas and Asia where many well-known people rank among their satisfied customers. "Schöchl Quality" is a generally acknowledged yardstick in boat building. The progressive dockyard at Mattsee produces eight basic yacht types altogether, in different sizes and designs. Schöchl is particularly proud of their modern and efficient batch production of the hull structures. The boats can then be individually customised with a large number of addition and extension variants according to each customer's requests. Up to even the technical specifications, the desires of the customer can be fulfilled and a boat crafted just for him."For many of our customers, it is often a unique acquisition and the fulfilment of a lifetime dream. It is imperative that we concern ourselves with all the desires of our buyers," explains Manfred Schöchl.
Requirements for an ERP/PPS System
A very high proportion of yacht production is handcrafted.
Until a ship can be delivered, many single steps are necessary in the planning and production, from the work of the metalworking design engineer and carpenter to the interior designer.Thus, a bill of materials for a Schöchl model often consists of more than 10,000 individual items and generates up to 5,000 production steps. “With our primarily manual production line at the Hochlohn base in Austria, our projects are under permanent cost pressure because the international competition does not sleep and the boats must be affordable,” says Gerhard Schöchl.
“We cannot afford errors in the estimations or in the project settlement.” Thus, in the beginning, an estimate was furnished over an ACCESS database in which all production materials and bills of materials were entered.
For the data entry of the hours worked, Schöchl installed the TMS data capture system. However, this solution quickly proved too inflexible for their practical use.
The production plans and bills of materials could not be linked with one another, which led to frequent demands from the workshops. Furthermore, once specified, orders for production could not be subsequently altered, so the planning manager had to delete the existing bills of materials when amendments were made and produce a new one. This meant not only high administrative expense, but accrued costs for an order were then not attached to the project any longer. It was neither possible to create a meaningful final costing, nor to keep the correct stocks on hand.
The Decision for GSD Software
Since an economical advancement of the enterprise with these systems was not possible, the management decided to introduce a completely new and holistic integrated solution.
With the help of an external advisor, an intensive market analysis was carried out resulting in some providers being invited to Mattsee for initial project discussions. The competition was quickly weeded out and they decided for ERP-Software V from the Neukenrother software firm, GSD Software.
“GSD presented a persuasive concept among all other providers. The system’s efficient handling of bills of materials was particularly important for us, which are on each level of the implementation adaptable and alterable. The flexibility that the ERP System V from GSD offers, not just in terms of custom adjustments, could not be matched by any other provider. For a quick and problem-free introduction of ERP software, nobody could offer a better price performance ratio to us,” describes Gerhard Schöchl about their decision.
Course of the Project
In co-operation with a GSD Software representative, the project manager at Schöchl could carry out the data migration into the ERP System V quickly and simply. More than 40,000 master data records and bills of materials had to be imported from various ACCESS tables into the GSD system. With easily adaptable interfaces, and with the help of the VARIOcontrol® development environment, the data was carried over without complication.
The requirements for the new software here were extremely high. For each individual boat, bills of materials had to be quickly and clearly created and/or broken down and then be convertible into material requisition orders and production orders.
Furthermore, the software had to offer flexible pricing structures that could be modified simply, as well as provide clear sales offers and sales order confirmations.
With the help of the intelligent variant generator used with GSD software, from the standard bill of materials of the individual building groups, specific bills of materials are produced which can then be manually adapted and supplemented for each order or offer.
From a specific bill of materials, the PPS system produces the necessary orders for production with the appropriate material lists and processing steps. Likewise, if necessary, material requisition requests are produced. All arrangements and materials are entered specific to the project, so that, at all times, a real-time project status can be called.
The existing time registration system was retained and integrated into the GSD system since Schöchl had already made significant investments in this area. The other vendor’s system is now supplied with data automatically by ERP System V with control parameters and default data. The software records the captured data automatically by project. Particularly pleasing for Schöchl is the possibility of changing a customer's requests, throughout the course of the project. Even after the commencement of production, access down to the level of a production bill of materials is possible.
Before, in this situation, all orders for production had to be deleted and re-entered, with the effect that all costs already incurred were lost. A recalculation of the complete sales order was thus limited. “It surprised us all which abilities the GSD system already includes in the standard package,” observes the project manager, Thomas Schöchl. “Adjustments besides the installation of the interfaces were only necessary in the area of estimating.”
The estimating schematics of Schöchl already permitted a manual, complete overview of all substantial components. Both on the item and building group level, and on the entire docket, these patterns were to be maintained and copied in the GSD system.
The GSD system was adapted with the development environment, VARIOcontrol®, in order to meet the specific requirements. “Owing only to the modern and unique development environment, VARIOcontrol®, could this task be realised with the smallest time and cost,” states the responsible project manager, Holger Konrad of GSD.
Significantly, the integrated VARIOcontrol® development environment also guarantees to Schöchl investment protection with future release changes.
Result
Already, only four months after the project start, the new ERP/PPS System V by GSD Software could be put into operation. “Today we estimate a boat with the help of the variant generator in less than 20 minutes, something we often needed many hours for before. A faster and more accurate handling of our prospective customers permits us to effectively state the effect of alternative boat variants,” states Thomas Schöchl about the improvement of customer service.Before introduction of the GSD system, the creation of orders for production and bills of materials required considerable time and personnel expense; this is now accomplished automatically by the system. Bills of materials and schedules can be adapted in each phase. The existing time registration system was fully integrated into the production data capture. All materials withdrawals are recorded per order, so that the costs of the project and its production status are always documented. Thereby, the software facilitates not only the job execution, but also deadline monitoring and stocktaking. Furthermore, Schöchl can now conclusively document and state the impact of order alterations.
Perspectives
After the successful start of the ERP/PPS System V from GSD software, Schöchl now also uses the document management system, DOCUframe®. It was introduced gradually for the support and complete monitoring of the process cycles, as well as for documentation. Since the ERP/PPS and the document management system work as an integrated whole, it is possible to document the history of a boat from the construction, including all changes, up to maintenance and repair in the Schöchl shipyards.
Furthermore, DOCUframe® makes all the information related to an order, from all departments in the enterprise, available automatically. Those processing data with Schöchl still have many options to make the process even more efficient and secure and to make all relevant information quickly, effectively and clearly available for the customer and staff members.
For further information:
GSD Software mbH
Ludwigsstädter Str. 95 + 97
96342 Stockheim / Neukenroth
Germany
Tel.: +49 (0) 9265 / 955 - 0
Fax: +49 (0) 9265 / 955 - 50 00
E-Mail: info@gsd-software.com
www: http://www.gsd-software.com
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