Kalmar RT Center: Moving Forward in a Rough Terrain Environment
Kalmar RT Center, based in San Antonio, TX is a specialized manufacturer of rough terrain material handling equipment. Kalmar RT Center supplies its RT240 Rough Terrain Reach Stacker and RT022 Rough Terrain Telehandler to governments & military installments globally, as well as companies operating in oil and gas, construction, remote logistics, intermodal logistics, mining, and forestry. Our products perform in the most challenging ground conditions where other equipment cannot hold up and perform. Kalmar RT Center employs approximately 160 employees and is a subsidiary of Cargotec, a recognized leader in cargo and load handling solutions around the world.
In 1995, Kalmar started a project called RTCH (pronounced “RETCH”) or Rough Terrain Container Handler. Their objective was to develop and produce machines for the US Army Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command (TACOM). In April 2000, Kalmar received a contract with TACOM for the supply of RTCH, and as a result, was awarded three additional contracts for vehicle maintenance, field service support and aftermarket parts sales. And, in 2009, Kalmar was awarded a second 5-year contract with the United Department of Defense for manufacturing the RTCH. By 2012, Kalmar had built and delivered its 500th
Situation
Kalmar RT Center, a wholly owned subsidiary of CargoTek, a Finnish based container manufacturing, shipping and logistics company, moved their manufacturing and operations to San Antonio about 4 years ago to be close to the US Defense market. With a proven product and as being a new company here in the United States, Kalmar was fully expecting rapid growth. And, with plans to expand from their current military market into the commercial market, Kalmar knew that they needed a much more robust, yet flexible and scalable ERP system. They further wanted a solution that ran on the cloud, so that their complete attention and valuable resources could be focused on product development and innovation rather than IT infrastructure management.
“SAP helps us be more efficient,” said Tim Crossno, CFO of Kalmar. “It further allows us to streamline manufacturing, optimize our inventory, and more effectively execute more government contracts.” Our previous system, QAD, was very limited and much less flexible, and did not allow us to understand manufacturing costs, purchase appropriate inventories, or execute the types of contracts that we need to. Recently, the Department of Defense requested a cost-plus fixed fee contract, and our previous system could not do that. So, naturally as our business expands, so do our systems need to expand, hence our decision to implement SAP Business ByDesign.”
Implementation
“Because we moved to a much more robust ERP solution, we knew we needed to get full team involvement,” said Crossno. “Right from the get-go, we formulated a TIGER team. That team, comprised of experts from every functional department signed on to the project. Because of their extensive knowledge of their specific processes, they had a crystal clear understanding of what was needed to enhance the business, function by function, and department by department.”
At the head of the TIGER team, Kalmar appointed both a member of the CXO team and a project manager. The CXO, who served as the executive sponsor, oversaw the overall implementation project and made sure that the team had the resources they needed. The project manager also oversaw the entire implementation project, but did so at a much more granular level, holding all team members responsible to stay on task, thus ensuring that all goals and objectives were met on-time. This organization proved to be very beneficial in successfully reaching Kalmar’s original, yet very aggressive go-live date. In an effort to ensure a successful “go-live,” Kalmar needed to make sure the system would truly work better than QAD. “So that we could be better off from day 1,” said Crossno, “we tested, tested, and tested some more. We examined every functional process of the system to ensure that things worked according to plan. And they did.”
Implementation Partner
“While we believe in our people, our products, and our mission, but we wanted to make sure we partnered with the right company when it came to assisting in the implementation,” said Crossno. “Because of their extensive experience in both manufacturing and distribution, as well their proven implementation methodology, and their full staff of SAP-certified consultants, we felt most comfortable moving forward with Navigator. Throughout the implementation, Navigator held our hands to make sure that our plans would work, and do so without a hitch. Even when potential functional roadblocks appeared, Navigator worked tirelessly to provide best-practice processes in our organization and the software to ultimately create workarounds that proved to be more effective in the long run.”
Results
As a supplier of rough terrain container management machines, Kalmar has a very complex manufacturing process. “With hundreds of production orders issued each week, and with thousands of SKUs needed to fulfill said orders, we found a better way to manage this process in SAP ByDesign,” Crossno said. “In addition, as a result of running SAP, we are able to actually track the true costs of production. This combined with real-time inventory control, better purchasing and forecasting, as well as enhanced contract execution capabilities makes SAP Business ByDesign the right choice for Kalmar RT Center”
About SAP Business ByDesign
SAP Business ByDesign is a single, integrated and completely Cloud or SaaS solution. Ideal for midmarket companies ranging from 15-5000 employees, SAP’s flexible, scalable and real-time solution helps organizations increase efficiencies across the business, gain timely insights through integrated analytics, and access business functionality, analytics, and reports anytime & anywhere from a broad range of fully supported wireless/smart devices. SAP Business ByDesign features best-in-class protection of data through highly secure data centers that are management, monitored, and maintained by SAP experts.
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