05/10/1999
Besides the Internet and electronic trading, there is one area that perhaps more than anything else has changed the way industry operates : this is EDI– electronic data interchange i.e. electronic business communication. A growing number of small industrial concerns are now sending and receiving invoices, delivery schedules, advice notes and other documentation electronically.
Strålfors is helping the truck manufacturer Atlet to get its 300 suppliers to go over to using EDI. Atlet employs just over 800 people, has a turnover of nearly one billion Swedish kronor and sells its products virtually all over the world.
A hundred or so paper documents every day will now become electronic mail.
With 300 suppliers delivering 4,500 articles, there is an enormous saving to be made by handling all the routines involved more efficiently.
”At Atlet, we send our delivery schedules regularly on paper to our suppliers. This means there’s a total of just over a hundred paper documents going out every day,” says Bo Månsson at Atlet.
With a new EDI system from Strålfors, the primary goal is to get the suppliers to receive delivery schedules and orders electronically.
The big challenge
The focus in this project is not on the technology itself. The big challenge is to get all the suppliers to cooperate. This requires methods, experience and the obvious usefulness of the system, all of which Strålfors is perfectly at home with. Strålfors is the market leader with its EDI system, now being used by just over 1,000 companies in some 20 countries.
”These changes will embrace the entire company when they’re fully introduced. What we’re doing will mean better logistics with more reliable and easier routines as this will reduce the risk of errors,” says Linda Andersson, project leader at Atlet.
The Strålfors Group’s business concept is to operate within the field of information transfer, focusing on computer-related products and services. The Group has a turnover of SEK 2.5 bn and operates in 11 countries. It has 1,550 employees, 850 of whom work in Sweden. Strålfors’ shares have been listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange since 1984.
For further information please contact
Linda Andersson, project leader Atlet on +46 31-98 40 00 or Mikael Carlsson, project leader, Strålfors Svenska AB on +46 31-89 35 93, +46 70-594 17 05.