Pidpa is a producer and supplier of pure drinkable water within the province of Antwerp, with a view on sustainability. For this they have 11 water production centers, 59 water towers and 27 booster stations. All this accumulates to 175 million liters of water every day.

Integrations at Pidpa

To have water flowing from the taps of 1.2 million people every day, a lot of infrastructure is needed. The day-to-day management of this infrastructure therefore requires cooperation between municipalities, contractors, consultancy firms, etc. All information about their projects and activities can be found in their ERP system SAP S/4 HANA. However, making this data accessible to our partners turned out to be a major challenge.

We noticed the need to do more integrations, but on the other hand we noticed that those integrations were very labor-intensive as a lot of coding was involved. After all, collaboration via mailbox is outdated.

We were looking for a modern way to efficiently link the dataflows between all parties. Ometa showed how their digital collaboration portals have led to enormous efficiency gains at other water companies. Thanks to the Ometa framework, effective coding has shifted to configuring the integrations. This has the great advantage of saving time and you can standardize several things.

“Communication with all our stakeholders and the digitization of all meters in our extraction area were major challenges for us. This is a project that will ensure a very large rollout until 2030.” says Stefan Meys, Director of Finance, ICT & Purchasing.

“Ometa made sure that the right information was delivered to the right person in a secure manner, at the right time, and the ERP system SAP S/4 HANA is always central.”

SAP S/4 HANA

In concrete terms, Ometa has ensured that the right information reaches the right parties at the right time in a secure context. The ERP system is always central to this. For example, our customers can consult the rates via the website, these differ per municipality and are automatically updated from our SAP system.

During the production process, employees have access to a digital workplace in which relevant information from various sources such as the SAP system can be seen, and they can also immediately make the necessary adjustments.

We have rolled out the same concept for collaboration with external contractors. Via such a digital workplace they gain access to, for example, work orders from the SAP system, so that they can process them and consult all relevant documents. This means that there is one clear communication channel.

“We notice that our focus is increasingly on cloud transition, and that can certainly be supported by the Ometa Framework.”

Future vision

After Pidpa made the switch to SAP S/4 HANA, they are also looking at which other systems they want to bring to the cloud. Tom Van Eysendeyk, Manager Applications Customer & Front End: “We notice that our focus is increasingly on cloud transition. This cloud transition can certainly be supported by the Ometa framework. Ometa has demonstrated to other customers that the platform is ready for this strategic shift.”

Even though KROHNE Group production sites are fully digitised, until recently all the data was confined in separate silos. Since all those systems could not be synchronised, it was not possible for the manufacturer of industrial instrumentation to have an overview of the data and real-time information. After two years scouring the market for the right partner, the Group eventually found Ometa: “They built a booking.com for the industry.”

KROHNE Group designs and manufactures high-tech industrial process measuring instrumentation. The solutions are marketed in many sectors, from oil and gas extraction to water purification or the food industry.

Operations Manager Leon de Borgie: “The entire product development takes place in R&D centres located in the Group’s so-called lead factories in the Netherlands, France, the United Kingdom, Sweden and Germany.” In addition, the Group has 12 production sites worldwide, including in China, the United States and Russia. They manufacture the products developed in the lead factories.

No overview or real-time information

Leon de Borgie: “Every KROHNE site is fully digitised. We keep data in our systems and databases for every product that rolls off the production line. Until recently, however, these systems could not communicate with each other. For example, if a customer inquired about the status of his order, our sales rep might have to contact four or five different colleagues to track that order. Same story whenever a change or update had to be made to a product after ordering.”

Long story short: nobody had a bird’s eye view and the teams were sometimes overtaken by events. Leon de Borgie: “Our employees could not rely on real-time information for their work. This was due to the fact that we had to extract bits of information from each separate system and then use the data to put together a complex jigsaw puzzle. We urgently needed to get rid of this outdated working method to make our sites future ready and streamline the exchange of information between them.”

“We keep data for every product in systems and databases. Until recently, however, they could not communicate with each other.”

Ometa offers the best solution

 KROHNE Group spent two years scouring the market for a potential partner. Leon de Borgie: “Whenever would-be suppliers presented their proof of concept, we faced the same issues: either a lot of customisation was required to align the platform with the production sites, or the provider had proposed a solution involving the horizontal or bus integration of our existing systems, with a high risk of synchronisation and communication issues.”

“Ometa, on the other hand, came up with a vertical integration solution. Their plan was to create a single interface above our existing applications and databases. Data from all underlying systems would end up in one digital dashboard accessible to all relevant departments.”

“Data from all underlying systems ends up in one digital dashboard accessible to all relevant departments.”

A ‘Booking.com’ for the production site

The result: the possibility to track and trace every product in the system with one push of a button. In addition, the solution would allow employees to intervene quickly and efficiently to resolve issues during production, and that directly through a single digital workplace. KROHNE Group definitely saw the merit of the proposed vertical integration and decided to partner up with Ometa.

Leon de Borgie: “You can compare it with booking.com: not only does it allow you to check room availability in real time; you can also book the hotel room of your choice directly. Ometa actually built a kind of booking.com for the industry.”

The interface is currently being rolled out in the European lead factories, and the other production sites will be next in a second stage. Even though the Netherlands lead factory was the first to start, the implementation has already gone further in the UK. The existing Dutch database structures are the cause of the delay.

“Ometa actually built a kind of booking.com for the industry.”

An expert team with extensive experience

 Leon de Borgie: “We had no fewer than 50,000 different routings in our ERP system for 20 different products.” An unexpected problem that has put a brake on implementation. Yet, in collaboration with the Ometa experts, the KROHNE team is currently unravelling this particular tangle. Leon de Borgie: “You can tell by the team members’ resolute approach that they are not novices in this siutation. With more than 20 years of experience supplying solutions to manufacturing companies, they are quite familiar with all the possible obstacles.

In short, for KROHNE Group, Ometa is the ideal sparring partner. Leon de Borgie: “Since the rollout is still in full swing, it is still far too early to measure ROI. One thing is certain, however: we are building a lean company together.”

Smurfit Kappa is a world leader in paper-based packaging solutions, such as corrugated packaging, displays and the ingenious ‘bag in box’ solution. The Irish multinational has operations in 35 countries, employs some 46,000 people worldwide and has a turnover of 8.9 billion euros. In the Benelux, the company launched ‘Customer Connect’, an ambitious automation project. Unlocking the ERP system was a crucial aspect of the project, which they entrusted to Ometa.

The Smurfit Kappa ‘Customer Connect’ project was launched in the Benelux by Arno Voets, Controller at Smurfit Kappa MNL: “Our aim is to get customers to stop viewing our operating companies as separate entities, and rather consider them as part of a whole: ‘One Smurfit Kappa’. To achieve this, we want to do more than supply the best products: we also provide our customers with consolidated data.”

No stock overview

 The project is composed of two phases. The first phase focused on the ERP system: “One of the problems was that any given customer could only track an order through the customer zone of the operating company with which it had placed an order. The system did not have the capacity to see whether the same customer had orders placed with multiple operating companies. In other words: there was no overarching real-time overview.”

“There was an additional challenge in that, in order to get a complete picture, we needed data from legacy systems, which differ depending on the operating company,” Arno continues. “Some operating companies, for example, work with a Corrugated Business Information System (COBIS), while others don’t. This leads to data often being presented in different formats.”

Chosen for its flexibility

 Arno therefore had to look for a software partner. “Even though I had invited proposals from several contenders, Ometa stood head and shoulders above the rest. I had no doubts about their expertise: a few years earlier I had already attended one of their presentations on system integration at an event. Their flexibility is their main asset. Many software companies tend to build a complex new system that only they know, making sure you, the customer, are no longer able to operate or adapt it. Ometa, on the other hand, proposed a solution that allowed us to preserve our existing ERP system.”

“Ometa proposed a solution that allowed us to preserve our existing ERP system.” – Arno Voets, Controller at Smurfit Kappa MNL

Ron Jongeneelen, Business Analyst at Smurfit Kappa Vandra, was also closely involved with the project. Ron: “Before we started working on the technical aspect, we first surveyed our customers in the Benelux. We asked them to tell us exactly which information and user experience they wanted to find on our new customer platform.”

And that’s where Ometa came in. Ron: “In essence Ometa placed a framework on top of the existing ERP system. An ‘extra layer’, as it were. The difference is huge: this integration allows customers to log in only once to get a real-time overview of all their pending orders, regardless of the operating company. With this extra layer, it is possible to consolidate data from different systems and write data back into the source system. In addition, companies are automatically linked to a group or parent company and we anticipate customers with questions about their stock. For example, they no longer need to contact our internal sales service.”

“Ometa placed a framework on top of our existing ERP system, an ‘extra layer’ as it were.” – Ron Jongeneelen, Business Analyst at Smurfit Kappa Vandra

Ometa in the lead

In a transformation like this one, it is important to address and communicate every step systematically. Arno: “What I really appreciated is that Ometa took the lead in this project. We had and still have a fruitful and close relationship with their team. They have organised various info and training sessions and are undeniable experts at communicating technical matters clearly.”

Pilot project with potential

The new system has been up-and-running since early 2019. Arno: “About 150 customers with COBIS as a legacy system are now using the new portal. The plan now is to roll this out to the other customers, as well as operating companies that use other legacy systems. The global potential: 370 operating companies and 60,000 customers.”

“After a successful test run, wed are quite motivated on the eve of phase two,” adds Arno. “During that phase, we plan to study ways of offering our customers a tailored order service, depending on their order volume. For customers who order periodically, for example, we are working on software that can independently extract orders from emails or SMS messages. We already have a win-win: thanks to the framework, our employees save time while our customers now have an overview and increased convenience. And that’s what matters to us: working together towards our customer’s success.”