ORISA CREALIS® product configurator in the form of a cloud edition

Many requi­re­ments could be cover­ed by using CREALIS® stan­dard func­tions In the cour­se of intro­du­cing the mer­chan­di­se manage­ment sys­tem Micro­soft Dyna­mics NAV, Rol­lo Solar® Melich­ar GmbH came up with the idea of intro­du­cing the topic of con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on the­re in order to impro­ve the qua­li­ty of the quo­tes. In June 2018, Rol­lo Solar® laun­ched their pro­duct con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on pro­ject. The struc­tu­ral out­lines of the solu­ti­on con­cept were alre­a­dy draf­ted during the first draft. In prin­ci­ple, the actu­al model­ling was rea­dy very quick­ly. For the deve­lo­p­ment of a pro­to­ty­pe of the Rol­lo Solar® con­fi­gu­ra­tor, a mana­geable spec­trum was initi­al­ly sel­ec­ted from the pro­duct ran­ge. Its suc­cessful imple­men­ta­ti­on was fol­lo­wed by the first opti­mi­sa­ti­ons and the suc­ces­si­ve expan­si­on with the coll­ec­tion of mas­ter data, pri­ce lists and tech­ni­cal docu­men­ta­ti­on as well as model­ling. Many requi­re­ments could be cover­ed by using CREALIS® stan­dard func­tions. So that chan­ges and exten­si­ons to the com­pon­ents and the map­ping of the net­work of rela­ti­onships can be ente­red into the con­fi­gu­ra­tor by the invol­ved Rol­lo Solar® employees them­sel­ves, they took part in a dedi­ca­ted trai­ning cour­se. The models can thus be deve­lo­ped and main­tai­ned inde­pendent­ly of the soft­ware manu­fac­tu­rer. By the end of Octo­ber, the first rea­li­sa­ti­on stage had been suc­cessful­ly com­ple­ted.

In the future, pro­duc­tion orders and main­ten­an­ce con­tracts could also be gene­ra­ted with the quo­te gene­ra­ti­on pro­cess The con­fi­gu­ra­tor met with a gre­at respon­se due to its simp­le intui­ti­ve ope­ra­ti­on, fast pro­vi­si­on and the high degree of per­fec­tion of the results. Howe­ver, the com­ple­te roll-out of the con­fi­gu­ra­tor for the dea­ler net­work is still pen­ding. It sug­gests a noti­ceable increase in enqui­ries and ulti­m­ate­ly in orders, with a simul­ta­neous decrease in return rates. The time nee­ded to gene­ra­te a quo­te has drop­ped to one tenth. Rol­lo Solar® reco­g­nis­ed that the­re was defi­ni­te­ly fur­ther poten­ti­al for auto­ma­ti­on. Howe­ver, it makes sen­se to go through a cer­tain con­so­li­da­ti­on pha­se, to gain fur­ther expe­ri­ence and to ana­ly­se some pro­ces­ses that are still car­ri­ed out manu­al­ly. “We are in the final roll-out and test­ing pha­se, in par­ti­cu­lar car­ry­ing out a vali­da­ti­on of the final model­ling. In prin­ci­ple, not­hing stands in the way of a full release in the first quar­ter of 2019,” repor­ted Felix Thor­mann. “We are thin­king of offe­ring main­ten­an­ce con­tracts with the quo­te gene­ra­ti­on in the future. A fur­ther step could be to also auto­ma­ti­cal­ly gene­ra­te pro­duc­tion orders with the parts lists resul­ting from the con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on.”