CREALIS® aids global distribution

BRECO Antriebstechnik Breher GmbH & Co. KG is providing its sales partners with a product configurator available online worldwide

BRECO ANTRIEBSTECHNIK BREHER GMBH & CO. KG

Foun­ded in 1967, the com­pa­ny is now regard­ed world­wi­de as the most inno­va­ti­ve pro­du­cer in the field of poly­ure­tha­ne timing belt tech­no­lo­gy. The toot­hed belts pro­du­ced at the Por­ta West­fa­li­ca site with 250 employees are dis­tri­bu­ted inter­na­tio­nal­ly by more than 20 sales part­ners. With seve­ral pro­duct lines for a wide ran­ge of appli­ca­ti­ons, BRECO offers indi­vi­du­al­ly con­fi­gura­ble dri­ve belts and timing belt pul­leys.

THE TASK

To effi­ci­ent­ly and easi­ly assem­ble an indi­vi­du­al pro­duct from a wide ran­ge of con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on opti­ons with a signi­fi­cant increase in the num­ber of vari­ants in the assem­blies, the pri­ce cal­cu­la­ti­on soft­ware used by the manu­fac­tu­rer for spe­cial belts rea­ched its tech­ni­cal limits. The data update and pri­ce cal­cu­la­ti­on of 35,000 items — with more than 10,000 addi­tio­nal objects — in one pro­duct group alo­ne was no lon­ger mana­geable with the exclu­si­ve­ly local­ly instal­led appli­ca­ti­on. BRECO was the­r­e­fo­re loo­king for a web-based con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on solu­ti­on that would enable the sales depart­ment to easi­ly assem­ble a pro­duct from various com­pon­ents and to cal­cu­la­te the pri­ce quick­ly and in accordance with the spe­ci­fi­ca­ti­ons

THE PROCESS

Rapid imple­men­ta­ti­on thanks to pro­duc­ti­ve and trans­pa­rent col­la­bo­ra­ti­on and fle­xi­ble soft­ware inter­faces The basis for the pro­ject was a three-day pilot work­shop in which con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on experts from ORISA and BRECO employees defi­ned all pro­ject requi­re­ments and deve­lo­ped con­cre­te solu­ti­on stra­te­gies. A cru­cial decis­i­on was the use of the stan­dard pro­duct con­fi­gu­ra­tor CREALIS®, with which the model­ling of the logic was rea­li­sed on the part of ORISA. Thanks to the adapt­a­ti­on of the inter­faces to the pro­duc­tion sys­tem used by BRECO and the extre­me­ly coope­ra­ti­ve col­la­bo­ra­ti­on, the pro­cess of accep­ting the mas­ter and artic­le data into the PDM of the CREALIS® soft­ware was quick and uncom­pli­ca­ted. The gra­phi­cal user inter­face of the con­fi­gu­ra­tor was con­sis­t­ent­ly imple­men­ted in line with the spe­ci­fi­ca­ti­ons of the BRECO cor­po­ra­te design using JSP, HTML and CSS. After only six months, it was pos­si­ble to pre­sent the first ful­ly func­tion­al ver­si­on. With the com­ple­ti­on of the sub­se­quent four-month imple­men­ta­ti­on pha­se, the use of the pro­duct con­fi­gu­ra­tor was released for all sales part­ners world­wi­de.

THE OUTCOME

A relia­ble tool for pro­duct con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on and pri­ce deter­mi­na­ti­on After a mere ten months on the pro­ject, BRECO is in pos­ses­si­on of a powerful and easy-to-use con­fi­gu­ra­tor that is available online to part­ner com­pa­nies world­wi­de and around the clock. The sys­tem assists with fin­ding items with an intel­li­gent search func­tion and gui­des you through the con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on, whe­re com­pon­ents are added to the sel­ec­ted items. The tech­ni­cal fea­si­bi­li­ty is che­cked syn­chro­no­us­ly. The final pri­ce is deter­mi­ned even during the con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on pro­cess, so that the sales depart­ment can pass on the actu­al pri­ces for chan­ges to the pro­duct com­pon­ents or fea­tures direct­ly and relia­bly to the cus­to­mer. Thanks to the save and export func­tions, finis­hed con­fi­gu­ra­ti­ons can be quick­ly and easi­ly saved as a docu­ment, prin­ted out and sent by e‑mail. Con­clu­si­on: An online pro­duct con­fi­gu­ra­tor that wins over BRECO part­ner com­pa­nies world­wi­de. The com­pre­hen­si­ve sup­port in assembling a pro­duct from various com­pon­ents with auto­ma­tic, error-free pri­ce cal­cu­la­ti­on makes CREALIS® a powerful sales tool. With the inte­gra­ted, per­ma­nent con­trol of tech­ni­cal per­mis­si­ons in the con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on pro­cess and the simp­le inte­gra­ti­on of new pro­ducts, CREALIS® is a com­pre­hen­si­ve sales solu­ti­on for BRECO.

THE OUTLOOK

After the pro­ject is befo­re the pro­ject Feed­back from BRECO sales staff after the con­fi­gu­ra­tor went live ope­ned up fur­ther poten­ti­al for opti­mi­sa­ti­on and adapt­a­ti­on for dai­ly use of the soft­ware. Thus, the per­for­mance and usa­bi­li­ty of the con­fi­gu­ra­tor was fur­ther impro­ved, which made it pos­si­ble to broa­den the user base con­sider­a­b­ly. Revi­sing the lay­out of print docu­ments makes cus­to­mer and sales pre­sen­ta­ti­ons even more con­vin­cing. In addi­ti­on, the com­plex pri­ce cal­cu­la­ti­on of the con­fi­gu­ra­tor was adapt­ed for inter­na­tio­nal sales. Fac­tors that signi­fi­cant­ly influence a relia­ble pri­ce deter­mi­na­ti­on, such as pro­duct-spe­ci­fic con­ver­si­on fac­tors and varia­ble cus­to­mer dis­counts, are now taken into account. Thanks to the modu­lar struc­tu­re of the con­fi­gu­ra­tor, future mea­su­res for adapt­a­ti­on and opti­mi­sa­ti­on can also be imple­men­ted easi­ly and in a tar­ge­ted man­ner.

”With the new con­fi­gu­ra­tor, we bring pro­duc­tion even clo­ser to the cus­to­mer and can indi­vi­dua­li­se pro­ductsand sales.”

- Dr. Jür­gen Voll­barth, Geschäfts­füh­rer der BRECO GmbH & Co. Zahn­schei­ben KG

THE PROJECT IN FIGURES

35.000

Items in the “Toot­hed belts” pro­duct group

10.000

Addi­tio­nal objects for pri­ce cal­cu­la­ti­on

20

Natio­nal­ly and inter­na­tio­nal­ly ope­ra­ting sales part­ners

6

Months until the first ful­ly func­tion­al CREALIS® ver­si­on.

10

Months until world­wi­de com­mis­sio­ning

THE CUSTOMER BENEFITS AT A GLANCE

  • Online pro­duct con­fi­gu­ra­tor for the world­wi­de opti­mi­sa­ti­on of sales pro­ces­ses

  • Simp­le, fast and relia­ble quo­te gene­ra­ti­on

  • Ful­ly func­tion­al pro­ducts based on valid builda­b­ili­ty rules

  • Simp­le ope­ra­ti­on and con­tent main­ten­an­ce wit­hout pro­gramming know­ledge

  • Final pri­ce cal­cu­la­ti­on as ear­ly as during the con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on pro­cess

  • Access to cus­to­mer-spe­ci­fic and prac­ti­cal know­ledge