With tradition and passion, Jörg Lederer GmbH from Amstetten has been meeting the highest demands of its customers with high-quality and innovative yarns since 1948. In addition to elastic or non-elastic covered yarns, customized products are also manufactured and tested in the company's own laboratory. Around 140 employees work on 44,000 m² of production space with 100,000 spindles at the company headquarters and at the subsidiary Coyarn AG in Haag (CH).
"We have been an update texware customer for a very long time," says Peter Wiesenberger, Managing Director of Jörg Lederer GmbH. "When I joined the company around 2008, we were already using an update solution from the 1990s based on an AS/400. It quickly became clear that this solution could no longer help us achieve our ambitious goals.
The solution at the time was technologically outdated and had reached its "natural" limits - new processes and a much wider variety of articles made it necessary to carry out numerous steps manually. "I noticed that huge amounts of time were being lost to unproductive activities," observed Peter Wiesenberger. "Goods were constantly being searched for, nobody knew where individual orders were and there was confusion in many places."
In principle, the outdated system only allowed orders to be sent to production with a corresponding material booking. "We only had the orders on the screen again when they were finished. We didn't know what had happened in production and it was also impossible to trace how and with what effort the order was produced," says Peter Wiesenberger, describing the situation at the time.
As a result, alternatives for a modern ERP solution were sought as early as 2008. They analyzed what seemed feasible and sensible in this direction and defined what a new solution should accomplish. It was clear that there was no ready-made off-the-shelf solution, that many customer-specific adaptations would be necessary and that the implementation could be correspondingly complex. For Peter Wiesenberger, a clear definition of objectives and careful planning were the decisive prerequisites for solving the problems he had identified.
It was quickly defined what the new solution also had to achieve: traceability of orders at all times, an overview of stocks, production capacity utilization and transparent data from purchasing to sales. "We didn't draw up a detailed specification," says Peter Wiesenberger. "In dialog with update texware and two other software providers, it became clear what our new solution had to look like." Once the solution scenario had been outlined, the providers were asked for quotes, which were submitted during presentations.
The decision was based on a weighted assessment of all the facts of the offers and also an evaluation of the providers. "I always have a gut feeling," admits Peter Wiesenberger. "But ultimately it's also about the people you have to deal with." Here, update texware already had plus points because they knew each other from the previous solution.
"We were almost afraid to work with such people and got the impression that we were opening a huge barrel here - in terms of maintaining the solution alone. In addition, as a medium-sized company, we would be a relatively small customer with correspondingly little significance. And I didn't want to release a project manager - the project implementation was to be managed with the existing employees.
The decision was therefore made with a clear result in favor of update texware and the ERP solution texware/CS. The decision-making committee led by Peter Wiesenberger came to the conclusion that an industry expert not only offers the more suitable solution, but can also make more valuable contributions in day-to-day collaboration.
A project team was set up for the customer-specific adaptation and implementation, although it still had to perform operational functions. Within the team, priorities were set as to who was to take care of which area or functionality. Almost two years passed before the solution was ready for use. "But that was down to us, because everything was done virtually 'on the side'," says Peter Wiesenberger. "I wouldn't do that again, because you can't have all the tasks that arose from the objectives on your radar from the outset. The effort involved was immense and the project team worked very hard. I am still proud of what was achieved here today.
In order to optimally prepare for the introduction, the team decided to initially implement the ERP solution as a pilot at the subsidiary Coyarn in Switzerland. As a relatively small manufacturing company, Coyarn had no IT solution at all and was therefore even further away from a functioning ERP system and offered an ideal test environment. In 2010, a "small" solution went live at Coyarn AG and the team gained two years of experience in order to ensure the smoothest possible implementation at the main plant.
It was never crucial for Peter Wiesenberger to implement the new solution in record time. "We thought long and hard about how and when to switch to the new system. We didn't want our customers to notice anything, but at best be amazed when they receive a differently designed invoice or better formatted delivery bills," says Peter Wiesenberger, explaining the relatively long lead time. "I had heard of horror scenarios where companies were at a standstill for several days or the wrong goods were delivered, incorrect invoices or no invoices were sent and so on. We had to avoid that at all costs."
This is why Peter Wiesenberger did not opt for a "radical changeover", but rather a phased introduction. From 2012, the changeover was made on a customer-by-customer basis: smaller customers with relatively manageable orders were "served" via the new system, but the existing system continued to run in parallel for around six months. The aim was to test and identify problems before they had a major impact. After all, the way of working has also changed in many areas: in the new process, for example, a lot of data was recorded by scanner for the first time, employees had to be trained and should gain realistic practical experience without slowing down operations. "It would have been chaos if we had switched from one day to the next," says Peter Wiesenberger. "The parallel operation was a lot of work and took a correspondingly long time, but the operating result didn't suffer and our customers didn't notice a thing."
The ERP solution has been running since 2015 texware/CS without any problems at Jörg Lederer GmbH. The system covers all processes, from purchasing to sales, including production with machine utilization and complete order processing from quotation to invoice. Peter Wiesenberger praises the resulting transparency, including business data that he was previously unable to view ad hoc. "We are very satisfied and are getting on well with the solution," summarizes Peter Wiesenberger. "We have achieved our original goals and many of the goals we have formulated since then." He is pleased that he was right with his initial gut feeling. "The really competent contacts at update texware understood us straight away because they come from the textile sector. It doesn't happen without sweat from everyone involved, but at the end of the day it's the result that counts. I can only recommend update texware and would choose them again."
"In addition to the right solution, the mutual understanding in our daily collaboration is also important. My gut feeling with update texware did not disappoint me."
"We carefully selected the best solution for us and implemented it together with update texware. We are very satisfied and would make the same decision again."
