CBASS Interfaces with SAP at Natal Portland Cement
Johannesburg, South Arica, January 5, 2005: NPC (Natal Portland Cement) recently changed to the SAP ERP system to which OPSI Systems tightly integrated the CBASS system in real-time - giving the appearance of a seamless single system.
What is CBASS (Cement Booking And Scheduling System)?
For each working day per depot, CBASS has the complement of available vehicles, their working hours and exactly what trips have been booked against each vehicle. At the time of order placement, CBASS is requested, by the ERP system, to offer possible offload times that are allowed based on current fleet commitments. By using estimated and learnt times for the tasks that make up the trip in question, CBASS can build up the time required to fulfill the request and analyses this against the current commitments to show possible offload times. Once a suitable time is chosen, this trip is added to the schedule and control returns to the ERP system.
On the actual day of delivery all first loads are manually assigned to actual vehicles and CBASS takes over from there. When a vehicle returns to the plant, CBASS is requested to dynamically allocate the next best load to minimize actual lateness of deliveries and to complete the committed schedule as closely to the plan as possible.
By integrating with GPS tracking, CBASS can follow the progress of each trip and update each task as they are completed. By knowing the status of all trips, CBASS is able to warn of possible late arrivals before they happen.
As CBASS has a high level of information on what was planned and what actually happened. Various management reports can be generated (for example schedule progress, late load discounting, quick turnaround discounts and transportation costings).
CBASS and SAP
When Natal Portland Cement (NPC) was purchased by Cimpor they had to change to the SAP ERP system. The vehicle scheduling, allocation to loads, dispatching, tracking and POD functions supplied by CBASS needed to be tightly integrated on a real-time basis with SAP to give the appearance of a seamless single system. By making use of Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technology, this was possible.
What has happened?
CBASS went live with SAP during December 2004 to schedule loads entered into SAP for 2005. Full functionality of CBASS and SAP went live at the beginning of January 2005 and has been running smoothly since then.
What is new?
During the integration process, the opportunity arose for NPC to request additional funcionality in CBASS. The ability to allocate a load to a vehicle that was already carrying a load was made possible by 'queuing' the load against the vehicle. This allowed for minimal delay between the POD of a vehicle's last load and the allocation of the next load, as queued loads are automatically taken to allocated status once the POD process is completed for the previous load. Enhancements were also made to the POD process where CBASS would calculate the 'quick turnaround' and 'late load' status of a load at the time of POD and feed this information back to SAP. This functionality removes the need for a manual system to post process late loads and quick turnarounds and as the SAP system has this information in real-time, discounts can be passed automatically.
For more information, please contact:
OPSI Systems ®
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NPC www.npc.co.za Tel: +27 (31) 450 4411 Fax: +27 (31) 451 9010 |
About NPC
NPC (Natal Portland Cement) is a large cement company based in Durban, South Africa.
About OPSI Systems
OPSI Systems is a software development and consulting house based in Johannesburg, South Africa. We focus exclusively on tools and services related to the supply chain, with a specific focus on vehicle logistics and demand prediction. We supply off-the-shelf routing and scheduling tools but also welcome work on custom projects for individual clients.
Key customers:
Clover, Barloworld Logistics, ABI (Coca Cola), Unitrans, UPS Logistics, Value Logistics, Tibbet and Britten, SAB Miller, and Reckitt Benkeiser.
About CBASS ™ (Cement Booking and Scheduling System)
CBASS is a system for booking and scheduling loads to supply customers with
accurate promises of delivery times while maximising fleet utilisation.
OPSI Systems® and CBASS ™ are trademarks of OPSI Systems CC. All other trademarks and registered trademarks referenced in this document are the property of their respective owners.
