Pioneer Work
The automotive sector was the first to use EDI in Brazil and Sintel was present since the beginning of the process with the development and implementation of products in the area. To be a pioneer enables Sintel to monitor competition’s growth, understand market behavior and transform customer feedbacks into innovative resources for products.
The EDI technology evolved, was disseminated, and became mature through time and forced many national and international competitors to lose focus and drop out of this segment. Sintel’s posture was different. For a long time ago it had already change its mindset about the theme. EDI became the flow of logistical information and technological research and development were directed to understand the behavior of the processes of this area.
Key Issues
1) From the information flow, what’s the evolution that can help and improve logistical operations?
2) How to interact with management systems in order to add value to information flow without harming or getting in the way of its essential functions?
3) How to reduce the several errors that occur daily in the interface between the company and its customers or between the company and its suppliers?
4) How to provide a technology that enables interaction in this context without compromising the efficacy of logistics operations?
5) What service levels can be offered to improve this scenario?
Technology, information & knowledge
Sintel already has the answer to all those questions and is applying its model in the automotive sector, in which it counts on a major research lab. Technologies still unavailable in the market and never-seen-before concepts about how to manage and improve information flow performance are being transformed into products and services.
The technical team is highly specialized and applies all its aptitude in the development of new technologies. Its work may be seen in the robust and stable MDI platform, which supports the management of any EDI operation, whether nationally or internationally bound.
And through the supply chain services area, it is possible to obtain the necessary knowledge that is turned into inputs to adjust the technology and Sintel’s services to the needs of customers, always purposing to improve their logistical operations.
On-time updating of processes with assemblers
The automobile industry is recognized as the one which invests the most on improvement and on enhancement of production processes. This virtue is implicit in the sector own characteristics, which is to mass produce with quality and costs appropriate to market realities.
In order to attain excellence, the automobile industry established strong and close relationship with its supplier base around the world. This process began with engineering through conjoint research and development of products. Then, the focus was directed to logistics, area in which relationship models were implemented – almost always innovative – in order to organize and evolve the productive process.
In summary, the assemblers provide a more organized visualization of the demand to its suppliers which, in turn, were able to optimize their production and on-time deliveries. Evidently, as time passed, the process of learning about the demand was adjusted, ever improving the chain integration.
With more than 20 years of experience in the automotive sector, Sintel’s role is to help suppliers to interpret correctly the demand which is electronically informed by the assemblers, provide internal operation adaptation and provide the necessary support in informing the alterations occurred to suppliers, also electronically. In order to accomplish all that, Sintel’s team accompanies everything that takes place in definition meetings of processes in each integrating sector.
Under the prism of automotive suppliers, Sintel is a solutions provider that eases up the integration of the processes of each assembler, when it does the following:
- considering of all points related to EDI;
- correct interpretation of demands;
- integration of internal processes, including JIT, Kanban and sequencing;
- support to the liberation of shipment notices through labeled print;
- structuring of information flow for the relationship with suppliers;
- help in receiving materials with visibility of what is in “transit”.
From the assemblers’ perspective, Sintel plays a facilitator role that knows and understands how the automobile industry treats each one of the processes of its Supply Chain, and transfers that know-how to its supplier base.
Sintel offers full support to its customers in order to comply with modifications and implementations made by the assemblers in their processes, always on-time.
Information Technology: Sintel knows what needs to be done
The adaptation of the internal systems in order to supply the assemblers has been a difficult and arduous task for IT professionals responsible for this activity. Generally, the ERPs were not created “process-oriented”, but actually “transaction-oriented”. This leaves a gap that is usually filled out by customizations and adaptations that are set in motion to supply the most basic needs for information.
The will of the automobile industry is the adaptation of the internal supplier processes in a way that those would be supplementary to the assemblers’ processes as if they were in fact extended to suppliers. However, to make this wish come true has become increasingly difficult, for the more generalized (non-customized individually for each assembler) the processes are, greater productivity will be reached. A dilemma was created: should we customize processes for customers or increase productivity?
How did Sintel equate this situation?
With the outsourcing of the EDI operation and monitoring of everything that takes place in a 24x7 basis, Sintel eliminated errors that were occurring in the processes of several of its customers due to the fragility of the environment that provided support to the EDI due to hardware and software problems; need of configurations; inclusion of new partners; implementation and maintenance of processes; besides large user turnover.
The EDI environment armor and the guarantee that everything is in the most perfect order ease the use of Logistics tools that provide visibility to demands and their variations, which provides the correct understanding of what is happening and enables integration with the internal environment free from impacts. Furthermore, such tools assist another critical point in the relationship with assemblers: the shipment notices (previous notifications of deliveries of produces or invoice copies) that provide support to material receiving operations and must be always transmitted before the material gets to the customer. In case this does not occur, in some assemblers, a fine is paid per invoice to be typed and, in all of them, demerit is awarded or score loss is recorded in the general performance evaluation.
The role of Sintel’s technical team along with the IT area is to be very close to the operation in order to provide support in the daily relationship with assemblers. The proximity with the Logistic area renders viable the interpretation of business demands and the translation of those demands into requirements for the Technology area.
Logistics Information Flow
The priority of the Logistics area is to ensure that the products arrive to those who ordered, fully complying with the service level established with each customer or market. As regards to assemblers this means: deliver in the correct address; at the gate previously established for that product; at the correct date; time; appropriate package; right quantity; free from damages; at the agreed upon price and with the electronic shipment document of the products sent beforehand.
In order to allow for this synchronism of any given company with customer’s operation, the logistics manager must be alert to the electronic flow of information, structured to provide all the operation needs to ensure correct service provision.
To accompany demand fluctuations in an on-time manner, through delivery posts of the assemblers, enables the quick realignment of the operation given that there is the systemic integration that supports this action.
How can Sintel help?
The information that arrives to customers must pass through the company with the objective to subsidize the areas about the effects that the demand is causing upon the operation; besides reflecting upon the sales orders or contracts, in the revision of production planning, in the checking of finished product inventory and inputs, in the re-calculation of needs conjointly with suppliers, and in the conciliation of what was planned and what was actually executed that must occur at every instant in order to keep the operation’s synchronization.
The systemic infrastructure must provide to logistics personnel all the subsidies needed for the evaluation of the impacts that the operation endures with demand shifts. Sintel, with the tools it possesses, enables its customers to manage that context, electronically integrating the flow of information with customers and suppliers, in order to expedite and ease up planning and execution of the entire operation.
Counting on Sintel is a relief to Logistics personnel.
