A robot checks delivery schedules from email, giving the planner a third of his capacity back
Twice a day, a robot extracts delivery schedules from PDFs, checks the orders in the ERP and sends a report to planning.
The starting point
The company has no EDI, so the production planner entered customer orders into the system by hand. He had to open every PDF schedule and pull out the key data.
Checking orders in the Qi application took a lot of manual steps: searching by material number, comparing dates and quantities line by line, and inserting or deleting lines.
Because the work was so laborious, only the first items were usually updated. Stock levels in each warehouse were checked one by one and added up by hand.
The goal
Remove manual work and errors from checking delivery schedules, and provide accurate, timely data for smooth deliveries. All in the Qi ERP.
The solution
- Twice a day, the robot monitors the mailbox. When it finds an email with a defined subject and a PDF attachment, it extracts the customer ID, order number, material number, delivery dates and quantities.
- In the Qi system, it checks existing orders against the PDF data, applies customer-specific delivery date rules, adds missing lines and, where allowed, removes surplus ones.
- It calculates the undelivered quantity and checks availability in all warehouses. If there is a problem, it sends an email.
- It checks and updates the sales plan.
- Once all emails are processed, it sends planning a structured Excel report. Error messages go to the IT department.
The result
- About a third of a key employee's capacity is freed up for more strategic tasks.
- A longer, more accurate planning horizon, which was impossible to maintain by hand because of the time it took.
- Data is more reliable because human error is gone.
The most tangible benefit is saving about a third of a key employee's time, so they can now work on more strategic tasks. The robot has also given us a longer and more accurate view of the future.
Documents from email to ERP with no human input
A robot reads documents from email and enters them in the ERP. Rekeying errors are gone and documents move through the company faster.
Supplier invoices go from email into the accounts on their own, twice a day
Twice a day, a robot goes through the invoice mailbox and creates each invoice in the accounting software as a provisionally entered document.
Over 20 automated processes, and three fewer hires needed
RPA took over work that was spread across several people, sped up processes and cut work outside office hours.