When it comes to checking blocked pipes, repairing water pipes, laying heating pipes or drilling installation shafts, millions of homeowners and tradesmen have been relying on the tools from ROTHENBERGER Werkzeuge GmbH for more than 65 years. As the world market leader for pipe tools and machines in sanitary, heating, air conditioning, refrigeration, gas and environmental technology, the Kelkheim family business produces around 30 million tools a year in its 14 factories worldwide. This is also proven by a look at the ROTHENBERGER product catalogue: From the handy metal saw to the municipal sewer cleaning vehicle: the tool manufacturer's full range leaves hardly any wish unfulfilled for trade, craft and industry. In addition, the high in-house production quota also contributes to the high satisfaction of their customers. Around 60 percent of the tools are manufactured in the company's own production facilities and then sold in over 90 countries. Thus, well-founded sales planning is essential for ROTHENBERGER.

Modern planning cockpits increase transparency

The basis for this is provided in Kelkheim by the SAP Business Warehouse (BW) software in connection with the SAP ERP merchandise management system. Thanks to the integrated solution, the demand for the different products can be reliably forecast - right down to the customer level. "In this way, we ensure that the flow of goods to DIY stores, trade representatives and sales companies all over the world runs smoothly."

Nevertheless, there was potential for optimization. For example, outdated administration cockpits made it difficult to consolidate planning data, and data entry was extremely cumbersome. "We wanted to replace old technologies, improve handling and thus accelerate the entire planning process," explains Christian Liebert, Supply Chain Manager at ROTHENBERGER. In close cooperation, the IBsolution consultants developed a new planning process. This also precisely maps the changed technical reporting requirements of profit and market segment accounting, as well as sales, and is seamlessly interlinked with material requirements planning in SAP ERP. "We were surprised at how smoothly the entire project went." In ROTHENBERGER's opinion, this is mainly thanks to the competent support provided by IBsolution GmbH. "The technical know-how and commitment of the IBsolution staff convinced us. They not only helped to implement the new planning and reporting processes but also willingly passed on their knowledge to our colleagues."

Today, ROTHENBERGER plans its sales quantities via various aggregation levels in SAP BW with the help of Integrated Planning. The planned figures are then automatically fed back to the merchandise management system and serve here as the basis for material requirements planning (MRP). In this way, ROTHENBERGER can produce precisely the tools that are in demand on the market in a targeted and demand-oriented manner. The central access point for sales planning is the SAP Demand Planning Portal in BW. It brings together all the necessary information centrally on a uniform platform - and thus ensures more user-friendliness and transparency.

Furthermore, the additional software AGIMENDO now also facilitates sales planning at ROTHENBERGER. The solution developed by IBsolution is standardized and pre-configured. This made it easy to integrate into the existing system landscape. "This has noticeably accelerated the course of the project. But we also benefit from the add-on during operation." Because with it, the responsible employees manage their master data in SAP BW independently. "If a data record had to be changed in the data warehouse in the past, this could only be done with the support of the IT department... and could take a long time." Today, colleagues from the specialist department carry out such tasks completely autonomously. "That saves a lot of time and money," says Christian Liebert.