Background
With more than 1,700 employees and annual sales of > € 90 million, Janoschka is one of the international prepress industry leaders. Well-known printers and international brand-name companies in the consumer goods and tobacco industries are supported throughout their entire packaging development process. Founded in 1976 and still family-run, Janoschka is headquartered in southern Germany and comprises a global network with currently 27 production sites in fifteen countries in Europe, Asia and South and Central America.
Challenge
As the company grew, so did the complexity and heterogeneity of the IT landscape. Acquired companies brought in their own IT infrastructures, ERP systems and individual applications. Over time, different data standards, local systems and process flows led to considerable additional work for employees, coordination deficits and efficiency losses across departments.
As a result, Janoschka decided to implement a central IT platform to simplify business processes and data flows across the company in order to:
- Accelerate digital transformation
- Achieve uniform IT standard at all sites
- Connect individual and standard applications
- Attain intelligent data integration
- Simplify and standardize processes
Solution
With the migration to a new ERP system and the associated need to connect master data from all branches, the company took the opportunity to holistically bring the IT structure to a new level.
The internal IT team developed specialized software solutions, including a back office order management application and a manufacturing execution system (MES) for production control. These are supplemented by standard applications, such as prepress workflow automation.
The Magic xpi low-code integration platform was used to centralize all applications and ensure cross-site data flow. The Magic software works independently of databases and platforms; and with a code-free & low-maintenance approach, a wide variety of applications, databases and systems can be connected in the cloud, on-premise or in a hybrid manner.
Janoschka’s IT staff have Magic’s low-code tool to independently create and optimize processes without tedious and cost-intensive classic software development. Central business logic, reusable components and configuration templates enable the internal IT department to quickly develop and implement new apps and connections.
“Magic xpi provides us with a wide range of functions and an attractive licensing model. With Magic’s low-code approach and the tools provided, we can now connect different IT systems and accelerate processes faster than ever before. The Magic logic is simple and intuitive to use, completely eliminating the need for tedious learning of new codes. This frees up valuable time which is used for new digitization projects.”
Ingo Gerber, Janoschka Deutschland GmbH senior system engineer and responsible project manager.
Results
Within 6 months, Janoschka achieved integration of the new MES software, connection of the Order Management and ERP systems, and the central connection of Oracle and Microsoft SQL databases. Thereafter, they linked their systems to customer applications for reliable data exchange including automated order processes, status queries and updates by both Janoschka and its customers.
With Magic’s low-code approach, designs for new processes and apps are created in a matter of hours. The time-consuming writing of new code and individual interfaces is a thing of the past.
IT increasingly relies on new technologies such as web services, which are put together much faster than before using the Magic interfaces. These types of tasks are easily accomplished primarily by junior developers with less development knowledge, with minor assistance from experienced software developers when needed.
Magic’s system enables small ongoing improvements, often reducing error chains and relieving demands on local IT groups and the master data manager. Customized input masks displaying measured values make production work easier; and the ERP system reauthorization process after user lockout was automated. The contact data update in the various systems is now automated and centralized and manual updates of telephone lists and master data are no longer necessary.
Outlook
Further modernization and digitization projects are in the pipeline, including a workflow system for graphic processes and the connection of the entire machine fleet to Magic. A new platform with direct customer connection is another milestone. Customers will be able to enter their orders directly in the system, and all data will be automatically loaded into the various systems via Magic xpi to ensure a seamless information chain for all project participants such as customer, sales, stakeholders, and others.
