Wisselaar Fastfood

Wisselaar Fastfood & Systeemgastronomie is a Netherlands, (Hendrik Ido Ambacht based) manufacturer of food service equipment and products. Founded twenty-seven years ago, Wisselaar is now a company of the Autobar Federation, a private group of companies based in the United Kingdom. They operate in three vertically integrated businesses: vending and food services, distribution and services, and packaging.

Wisselaar produces and sells a variety of cold food service products: soft-serve ice cream and milkshake mixes, and toppings and syrups for milkshakes. The ice cream and milkshake are made to be used in the ice machines also marketed by the company. In the hot food category, Wisselaar sells coffee machines, coffee, cappuccino, espresso, sugar sticks, and milk cup products. Wisselaar also designs and creates professional kitchens for restaurants and other institutions.

Wisselaar averages about nine truck shipments a day, with the average of 30 customer orders on each truck. With picking slips, invoices, acknowledgments, and other forms, Wisselaar prepares several thousand documents weekly. Managing these numerous documents is a key business challenge for Wisselaar and that is why they use Output Management (Confirm) for their trade document generation requirements.

More than 35 Wisselaar users run Output Management (Confirm) to print all of its external documents and some internal ones at the Hendrik Ido Ambacht site. The software enables Wisselaar to print order acknowledgements, purchase orders, delivery notes, invoices, and pro-forma invoices. Dunning letters are now being implemented. In addition, batch pull reports and technical service documents are printed for internal use.

Wisselaar uses Output Management (Confirm)'s multilingual capabilities for its import/export activities. With Output Management, Wisselaar can produce documents in Dutch, German, and English.

Previously, the company used pre-printed forms that were often outdated, and relied on inter-company mail to get the order acknowledgements and shipment confirmation documents to departments like accounts receivable and sales. "Now, our employees have instantaneous access to the information needed to do their jobs," according to Wim Remmerswaal, Financial Manager at Wisselaar.

Under its previous system, the total business process was slower and less flexible. Departments often had to wait to receive the appropriate documents and if data was entered incorrectly the whole process was stalled, leading to delays in shipments.

Now, with all of its documents online, changes, for example, can be updated right in the system, ensuring that forms are up-to-date and accurate. "With Output Management (Confirm), we have all of our documents in one place, where data can be easily modified," Remmerswaal said.

Since Wisselaar fills daily so many complicated customer orders, and employs different methods of stock administration, it is inevitable that incorrect deliveries will occur. To prevent generating a lot of credit notes, Wisselaar decided to do the pick confirm process after the truck returns. Normally, delivery notes are only produced after pick confirm, resulting in the picking slips being transformed into delivery notes. But, picking slips are still required for internal use. Using BPCS's batch pull report function, a new document was created that can be used as an internal picking slip.

Y2K... and beyond
To ensure a smooth transition and minimal problems with Y2K compliance, Wisselaar implemented Output Management (Confirm) after Autobar Group decided to make the solution a business-to-business integration standard for the entire corporation. Wisselaar then upgraded to the JAVA-based Output Management (Confirm) in May of this year. Output Management is integrated with Wisselaar's SSAGlobal's Business Planning and Control System running on the AS/400 and a Microsoft NT workstation.

Using information received from the host ERP system, Output Management (Confirm) employs Wisselaar's rules to print exactly what documents are required for each business situation. For Wisselaar, these documents include order acknowledgements, invoices including debit and credit memos, and picking lists. Output Management (Confirm) also determines where printed and electronic copies of documents are routed: shipping, warehouse, customer, management, sales, vendor, technical department, and purchasing.

According to Remmerswaal, the next step for Wisselaar is to provide the capability for their field engineers to input the customer data directly into their hand-held terminals, which then will automatically print invoices and other documents instantaneously.

"What we like most about Output Management (Confirm) is the fact it is totally integrated within our ERP and we do not have to perform several separate actions to start document printing". "We also are able to change layout or text very easily which is very helpful, for example, with our promotion activities."