Press Report

Also a controlling system within  transport management has to go along with it. The solution was a logistics server®

(Logistik Inside 07.2006) "This project somehow fell into my lap" remembers Martin Kaeppner from Novartis Pharma. Originally the manager who is responsible at the Swiss pharmaceutical group for purchasing logistics services wanted to improve purchasing processes in some form or another. The keyword was auditing. Processes and controlling within the transport management should be carried out automatically and they should be in harmony with the rules of the Sarbanes-Oxley-Acts (SOX). The various fees and additional charges which arise during transports can only be displayed in SAP quite difficultly. "We then came across the logistics-server of the provider inet-logistics rather accidentally," reports Kaeppner. The buyer was at the same congress as the inet-manager Oswald Werle. The fact that Werle as a person and inet as a company both come from the shipping industry convinced Kaeppner personally who already set up a similar system for the commercial giant Metro once. Whenever Novartis wanted that somebody transported some goods from A to B a transport order was generated in times before SAP in an internal ERP-system and today in SAP.

Typical for this situation was lots of paperwork such as import licences or permissions for dangerous goods. "Then you have a set of up to 22 different documents, which are put in an envelope and which either go directly to the logistics service provider by messenger or for sea and air freight to our accounting turntable Panalpina," explains Kaeppner the old procedures. All of this was automated and thus is more transparent today. The Supply Chain Execution, i.e. the preparation, placing of orders, execution and control of transports at Novartis Pharma now runs via the logistics-server.