Documents crucial in logistics
Warehousing, packaging, stock management, customs facilities, quality control—and taking care of the necessary information and documentation streams, logistics and documentation are two sides of the same story. Waybills, delivery notes, hazard maps, invoices… the document stream in a logistic process is as complicated as the goods stream itself. Harrie Priems is IT manager at Schenker and—like in many organisations—is also responsible for document management processes. A genuine IT-person, he prefers the expression ‘output’. His principal proverb: “The quality of the output defines the error chance in the business process”.

 

Bottlenecks and new technology
Bottlenecks in business processes usually come from new demands, needs for higher capacities and added process functions. But this is only one aspect. The other is that bottlenecks become visible (and disturbing) according to their solvability.

 

Because of the interaction between business processes, their changes, the constraints that emerge and the solutions for them, new technology can always find its place. In this case, Océ PRISMAsatellite Output Management transforms the current printer park at Schenker to an up-to-date document system.

 

Reasons for Océ PRISMAsatellite
Schenker coped with several apparent bottlenecks. Quite obvious are the limited possibilities old technology offers to print a document there where it will be used—and moreover, to ‘re-route’ the document if the (logistic) process requires this for a certain reason. One shouldn’t consider a document process as just accompanying or secondary. Goods conveyance cannot exist without document streams; it is not unthinkable that the logistic process slows down or even stops when the document stream falters.

These issues have become more complicated after the merger of two Schenker business units. The data for documents does not only come from the AS/400 environment of the former Schenker-BTL, but also from the Unix environment of Schenker International. Here one can see the cause for installing Océ PRISMAsatellite Output Management. This software merges datastreams to a single document stream—in a way that it is not visible from where the data originates. Towards the printers, the software ‘divides and rules’ and increases operational safety as well as flexibility in distribution.

 

‘Data-refinement’
Elaborating on his statement, Priems shows various examples of how the Océ software improves the quality of output. “PRISMAsatellite,” he says, “intelligently handles the data delivered. The variable data from IT environments is transformed and completed. Codes can be represented as text or logos. Barcodes can be added. An almost bare form can—if the logistic process requires—be supplemented with instructions and prescriptions. This form not only becomes a data carrier, but also gains added value as a business document.

 

A simple example: we can incorporate a reminder in a freight document for a truck driver to bring back empty pallets. The more consistently this happens the better, since we have to bill for non-returned pallets. This way the document and the administrative process influence each other’s quality.”

 

Future-proof
To the question about future plans, Priems immediately answers with: “Further decentralisation of the print function”. In IT words, Océ PRISMAsatellite is ‘rolled out’ over the existing printer park while Océ has taken back the relatively expensive-to-run desktop printers. The combination of Output Management with the other Océ PRISMAsatellite module E-Forms is very promising, since this brings e-mail and fax into scope as well. These media imply a new dimension to the meaning of decentralisation. Priems has faith in these future developments. “PRISMAsatellite is very user-friendly”, he states contentedly. “Re-shaping dry data to informative forms goes really well. Of course we will be steering on operational reliability, but I expect the combination with the new media to be fine.”

 

Schenker: a logistics giant
Until 1 January 2002 there were two Schenker organisations active in the Netherlands. Schenker-BTL, with headquarters in Tilburg and subsidiaries in Beringe, Ede, Oldenzaal and Venlo, has been working with Océ document systems for years, and used to focus on surface transport. Schenker International was active in air and sea transport, utilising an enormous warehouse (30,000 pallet places) in Rotterdam, a smaller warehouse in Amsterdam and a subsidiary fully focused on flower transport in Aalsmeer. Both organisations were brought into one structure beginning of 2002, counting approximately 1,000 employees that realise a turnover of some € 180 million. Schenker is part of a worldwide network in which no less than 32,000 people do their logistic job. The company is part of the even larger Stinnes Logistics, which is also active in the distribution of chemicals en raw materials such as steel.