Rooted at home, at home in the world

The traditional Ammerland Molkerei dairy provides people all over the world with delicious dairy products. To do so, it needs not only lots of cows, space and state-of-the-art equipment, but also the ability to effectively manage its global business processes and resources. The solution: Comarch ERP Enterprise. The partner: MAIT.

The traditional Ammerland Molkerei dairy is based in Wiefelstede-Dringenburg in Lower Saxony, halfway between Oldenburg and Wilhelmshaven. Here, in one of the largest and most modern cheese dairy plants in Europe, the cooperative, founded in 1885, processes raw milk from thousands of cows in Lower Saxony every day. In addition to milk, it produces a wide range of cheeses, butter, whey and milk powder. Word of the high quality of Ammerländer products has spread far beyond the borders of Lower Saxony: With the help of numerous subsidiaries, Ammerland now successfully sells its dairy products in more than 60 countries around the world. The export business already accounts for about half of total sales. Growing international demand requires Ammerland to continually expand and modernize its production and storage capacities. The second production site in Oldenburg and the large warehouse in Brinkum, East Frisia, have also continued to grow.

Greater complexity requires more effective management

As the number of markets grew, not only did capacity requirements increase, but so did the complexity of the business. As a result, the management recognized early on the need for a smooth, effective solution for planning, controlling and managing all the necessary resources - in short, a reliable Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. On the recommendation of the MAIT’s IT and software experts, and in cooperation with the internal IT department, Ammerland chose Comarch ERP Enterprise. It was a wise decision: the ERP software, which has been tried and tested around the world, is very well suited to the international and often changing requirements of the dairy cooperative in Lower Saxony. The sophisticated software components of Comarch ERP Enterprise enable the effective management of all business and operational processes. A particular advantage is that the integrated multi-site structure allows complex collaborative processes to be mapped - processes that are simply part and parcel of a global player like Ammerland. The web-based software ensures transparency by providing cross-location and cross-organizational information that can be easily accessed and evaluated in real time at any time. 

Continuous integration with MAIT

Comarch ERP Enterprise now accelerates almost all processes at Ammerland and can be connected to almost any other business software via an interface. To this end, MAIT is constantly developing new solutions for the cooperative or optimizing existing ones to connect Comarch ERP to other systems, especially in the logistics area. The Ammerland dairy has its own washing hall on its premises, where both its own milk collection trucks and external trucks are cleaned. This is connected to Comarch in order to automate the entire cleaning process as much as possible, from ordering and carrying out the cleaning service to invoicing. MAIT has also connected a high-bay warehouse with more than 22,000 pallet spaces for cheese to Comarch ERP. Since then, incoming and outgoing goods are recorded semi-automatically in real time. This means that requirements can be specified earlier and more reliably and passed on to production." MAIT is certainly one of the most experienced Comarch partners. We can now contribute almost 20 years of expertise to the development of customer-specific solutions. At the same time, we guarantee absolute proximity to Comarch standards. It couldn't be more secure, predictable and functional," says Sebastian Kitte, Head of Sales Customers Comarch ERP, who is responsible for the sale of the software - including in Ammerland.

MAIT offers flexible and versatile support

In addition to Comarch ERP, MAIT also integrates the modern business intelligence system QlikView and takes care of ongoing maintenance and adjustments. The proven data analysis software brings together all the necessary company data and provides analyses based on it in a clear dashboard. MAIT has also implemented a contract management system. This was particularly necessary due to the company's global collaboration with supermarket and discount chains. The dairy also uses a mobile process solution and a workflow engine integrated with Comarch ERP. “The customer is very emancipated and knows what they want. They decide on a case-by-case basis whether they want to tackle something themselves or use our support. No problem for us,” says Julia Henke, Senior Consultant at MAIT’s Comarch business unit. From the dairy's point of view, this versatility is the icing on the cake of MAIT's service offering. And Ammerland can continue to rely on it in the future.