Rehau
leverages
LANSA & newlook
to update
their ERP
application
Background
REHAU is a large German
organisation employing 7,200 staff HQ in the city
of the same name – Rehau, in the State of
Bavaria! In 2002 the German REHAU AG + Co produced
a turnover of over €964m.
Founded in 1948, REHAU is
a global polymer system supplier developing, manufacturing
and distributing a variety of thermoplastic and
elastomere products.
Challenge
It serves
customers
in a variety
of industries
including
car manufacturing,
structural
engineering,
building
technology,
electronics,
road construction,
civil engineering,
sanitary
and heating
technology,
medical engineering,
furniture
production
and many
more. REHAU
utilizes
all common
processes
in polymer
production
including
extrusion,
injection
moulding,
thermoform
and blow
extrusion.
In Germany, REHAU has used newlook
for a number of years to modernise and extend
their decentralised ERP system throughout 16 sales
offices and 12 manufacturing plants. Ewald Gebhardt,
a Departmental Manager in the sales organisation
says, "newlook
was ideally suited to modernise and extend our
ERP application. We required a total user interface
solution but did not have access to the original
5250 source code. newlook is
easy to use and creates everything on-the-fly,
we fully support the functionality it has to offer."
Solution
The decentralised
plants
and sales
offices
use an
internally
developed
application
for ERP.
It was
a green-screen
solution
and required
a major
update
and modern
user interface.
Any solution
that required
to extend
or interpret
DDS and/or
RPG source
code couldn't
be used,
since the
ERP system
had been
developed
with the
LANSA development
environment
and no source
was available.
Also,
in the old
application,
certain key
requirements
couldn't
be fulfilled
with standard
products
like Client
Access. For
example,
it wasn't
possible
to access
Word or Excel
documents
with the
click of
the mouse!
Another
challenge
for the German
IT department,
which supports
the worldwide
network of
sales offices
and manufacturing
plants, was
that they
needed a
product that
analysed
the existing
5250 data
stream dynamically
on-the-fly,
one which
was rules
and filter-based
and one which
did not require
manual intervention
for over
5000 dialog masks.
Hence newlook
was chosen
as the ideal
solution.
Benefits
& Improvements
Training
and implementation
were underway
within a
few weeks
with the
development
team being
able to use
newlook effectively
after only
one week.
Filters,
rules and
standard
masks were
defined so
that all
screens were
displayed
in an appealing
manner.
Additional extensions of function followed later.
These included, exchange of data with standard
office software and mail systems, and user-specific
cursor positioning for different screens with
images.
The result is that REHAU utilises 1700 newlook
licenses worldwide! The acceptance of the ERP
software, particularly amongst new employees,
has been very positive and training has become
easier.
When the
decision
was made
to purchase
newlook,
it was still
relatively
unknown,
at least
in Germany.
REHAU had
learned of
its existence
through its
close working
relationship
with LANSA.
As mentioned
before, there
was no comparable
tool that
was able
to dynamically
display 5250
masks in
a graphic
interface.
With all
the other
tools, the
lower estimates
for refacing
were around
4 hours of
revision
time per
mask.
That
would have
required
a project
of over 20,000
hours - or
many months
of effort.
In summary,
REHAU feels
it made
a good
choice
with newlook.
They have
successfully
revitalized
a very
important
internal
application
which has
a very
easy-to-use
and appealing
user interface – all
achieved
at an acceptable
development
cost. Indeed,
a very
worthwhile
return
on investment!
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