EDI communication without speed limit for petrol station suppliers
Gilbarco Veeder-Root, the world's leading provider of solutions for the petrol station industry, relies on EDI technology from menten for communication between international locations.
Bergisch-Gladbach, 10 July 2019: The petrol station supplier Gilbarco was looking for a way to quickly transmit procurement requests from various European service companies to its European spare parts service hub in Salzkotten. The aim was to enable rapid delivery of the required parts. The technology chosen was the EDI solution i‑effect® from menten GmbH. It receives incoming XML messages from the service companies, converts them into DB2 format and automatically fills the ERP system in Salzkotten with the order data in the correct fields.
The European headquarters of Gilbarco Veeder-Root is located in Basildon, Great Britain, the central spare parts warehouse for the entire continent in Salzkotten, North Rhine-Westphalia, the main production location of the German Gilbarco GmbH. All spare parts for Europe are stored there in order to relieve the service companies on site of the logistically complex warehousing. The spare parts are managed and prepared for dispatch in ERP software based on IBM i developed by Gilbarco itself.
EDI solution i‑effect® links heterogeneous systems
When a European spare parts service hub was set up, the aim was to transmit procurement enquiries from the various countries to Salzkotten as quickly as possible. The goal: 24 hours after the customer's request, the service technician of the national company should be at the gas station with the spare part and install it - hardly possible with the traditional ordering method by telephone, e-mail or fax. Therefore, the company relies on electronic transmission via EDI. The EDI solution i‑effect® links heterogeneous systems so that data can flow unhindered. Elmar Teipel, ERP organizer at Gilbarco GmbH: "The menten GmbH solution convinced us the most, especially when it comes to operation via a modern user interface. Here menten is far ahead of EDI applications comparable with WebControl."
As a first step, Gilbarco connected the national subsidiaries of the Nordic countries and the United Kingdom (UK) to the software. A wide variety of ERP applications are in use there. As soon as a customer order is received in Finland, the ERP system generates a spare parts order and sends it as an XML file to Salzkotten. i‑effect® converts the XML data stream into the DB2 format of the IBM i-based ERP software. The menten GmbH creates these mappings for Gilbarco in outsourcing. Some adjustments had to be made for this. Elmar Teipel: "A consulting partner like menten was ideal for this because he knows EDI in the IBM i environment".