Berne shopfitting GmbH
Digital proof of assembly with pen and paper
The company Berner Ladenbau from Osnabrück realizes high-quality designed shop fittings for its customers. In 2011, it was looking for a simple but efficient solution that would allow the assembly work carried out at the customer’s premises to be promptly transferred to the company headquarters for prompt invoicing, recording of employee working hours and automatic electronic archiving of assembly records. This was solved with a digital pen, which writes on normal paper and at the same time digitizes the written text. The assembly certificates are filled out daily on site and then automatically sent to the central office via mobile phone for immediate further processing.
Innovation, quality, tradition: these values have made Berner one of the most efficient shopfitting companies in Europe. For almost 100 years Berner Ladenbau has been implementing bakery, café, restaurant and retail solutions at the highest level.
Over 20 teams are on the road nationwide
At the Osnabrück location, the shop fittings are produced centrally. They are then sent to the branches of Berner Ladenbau for final assembly at the customer’s site. A total of 20 teams are currently on their way to assemble the shop fittings produced. In addition to the company’s own fitters, subcontractors are also on the road to handle peak order periods at short notice.
“Getting the installation proofs from our own employees in a timely manner was very time-consuming with the previous technical equipment, consisting of notebook and portal scanner,” says Wolfgang Franke, long-standing IT manager of Berner Ladenbau. “There was an urgent need to improve work efficiency and handling”.
The assembly certificates are elementary important for the company in several respects. Erik Krüger, the customer service manager at Berner Ladenbau, sums it up as follows: “We need the assembly certificates on the one hand for invoicing, but above all we need them to know whether the assembly work has been completed or whether any rework is still outstanding. If we don’t get it in time, it hangs in production and the customer is pissed off.”
The following central problems called for an innovative solution:
- The assembly proofs usually took 3-5 weeks, from the time of assembly at the customer’s site until they were available in Osnabrück for reworking.
- Reworking was delayed because the note on the assembly certificate was not known.
- Assembly verifications were lost.
- Customers could not be given any information in the event of queries, as the installation proofs were still with the fitters.
Functionality of the EasyPen
The underlying solution is a standard solution from the Wuppertal company Ontaris GmbH & Co KG. It takes over the advantages of the existing paper process (performance of the customer signature, paper does not break and can get dirty, no special technical knowledge of the installer is necessary), but on the other hand it eliminates the disadvantages of the existing process.
“The entire solution is based on the “EasyPen system” developed by us,” explains Martin Schüßler, Managing Director at Ontaris. This is a standardized solution that makes it possible to make forms filled out by hand available in electronic form at the same time. The heart of the solution is a ballpoint pen with integrated camera (EasyPen), which digitizes and stores the written information while writing. A special background pattern, which is automatically printed on the form, enables the pen to read the data and assign it uniquely.
“For the user, our solution hardly changes anything. He writes as usual with a pen on his paper form, with the small difference that the data is sent directly to the head office via a mobile phone” Schüßler explains the system. The digital capture of the information takes place automatically without the user having to consider anything special. For the users, there is no need for extensive training and complicated and error-prone familiarization.
The mobile phone immediately and completely automatically transmits the received data via an encrypted Internet connection to a central server. There, the received data is automatically processed by means of a handwriting recognition system and is available in digital form for further processing by any computer system.
Implementation of the solution in practice
“For us it was all normal. Although we saw again and again that the conventional paper process had many gaps, the use of notebooks was no longer an option for reasons of cost and handling on the construction site,” says Wolfgang Franke explaining the initial situation. “Mr. Schüßler impressed with his professional presentation. It was right from the start.”
During the implementation and introduction of the new system it was important that as far as possible the work flow for the fitters remains unchanged. “Especially with subcontractors, you have the problem that you usually have no direct access to the individual employees to explain a new system to them. This is the reason why the implementation of a new solution quickly fails”, explains Mr. Franke. In addition, the solution should integrate itself into the own EDP system as easily as possible and without great effort.
“The area of application at Berner Ladenbau is the classic application we cover with our EasyPen system” explains Martin Schüßler. “It is important to change the work processes for the employees only as minimally as possible, because otherwise a rejection of a new system will arise very quickly. Employees on site normally have no advantage from a new electronic solution, but usually only have to deal with a new technology that does not always work smoothly”.
Each team is equipped with blank assembly reports, an EasyPen set consisting of a digital pen and a mobile phone. On-site assembly lasts between 2 and 5 days and during this time the working hours and special incidents on the site are recorded daily on the assembly certificate. This data is automatically sent via mobile phone at the end of the assembly, including the acceptance signature by the customer, by simply placing a tick on the assembly certificate.
A few minutes later, the assembly proofs arrive in a central inbox, where they can be immediately post-processed and forwarded to the various departments. On the one hand, the data is automatically transferred to the merchandise management system and the assembly certificates are automatically archived as PDFs. Open points can immediately be inquired with the fitters by telephone, as they are still on the construction site.
“The system is the bomb!”
“The introduction of the system ran parallel. Ontaris took care of printing the forms, setting up the system and supplying us with the hardware. The next day, all we had to do was give the fitters the new blocks, have them fill out an assembly report once and send it out and that was it,” says Erik Krüger, summing up the introduction.
“The system is the bomb! Everyone understands it, everyone can operate it and it is 100% reliable”, Wolfgang Franke summarizes the situation. “The Ontaris team is always at our disposal with ideas when we want to implement new things with the system.
Download case study
