Page title: The case Unitec D GmbH
Content to translate:
Unitec D was born in response to companies' demands to optimize and reduce costs generated by the increasingly broad management of international supply.
Unitec D (High Tech Industrieprodukte Vertriebs GmbH), is a company based in Augsburg (Germany), founded in the late 1980s on the initiative of the Italian businessman Vincenzo Marino, who had acquired important experience in the field of large automation systems for the construction of vehicle engines worldwide.
Unitec D was born in response to companies' requirement to optimize and reduce costs generated by the increasingly broad management of international supply. The concepts and related services of “Integrated Supply” and “Supply Outsourcing” (not to be confused with Purchasing activities) that Unitec developed to meet the requirements of its customers, fully satisfied the expectations of its clientele, generating an important growth impulse for the German company.
The guarantee of a minimum saving of 25% in operational costs that Unitec confirms to its customers derives, in addition to specific skills, from the high degree of automation of processes achieved and the interconnection between companies in which the company has invested and invests important resources.
To implement these systems, Unitec equipped itself with its own structure for the development of client/server applications dedicated to the paperless management of supply processes and which, later, with the advent of the Internet, gave rise to the first e-procurement activities.
The company therefore has the merit of having characterized and taken advantage, considerably in advance, of the possibility of obtaining significant cost reductions related to the management of supply processes, through the use of the network, the concepts of outsourcing and industrialization in the management, receipt, preparation and transmission of information.
The mission that Unitec pursues is the continuous transformation of fixed costs into variable costs for customers and, simultaneously, a reduction of them. In this way, service clients can dedicate themselves exclusively and with peace of mind to their own strategic core business activities, delegating all management processes that normally absorb economic and professional resources, in fact diverted from other business assets.
Client companies also obtain a series of additional savings based on purchasing aggregation and international industrial intermediation activity.
The delegation of supply activities to Unitec makes it possible to maintain stable relationships established with its own suppliers, since the choice of suppliers remains the sole responsibility of the client. Therefore, the individual management of supply processes, up to the payment of invoices, is outsourced.
The company continued, and still continues, to develop advanced concepts and services for companies (also public), among which it is possible to mention the “Virtual Warehouse” with some of its specializations:
- Virtual Hospital (for a health district)
- Refrigerated Virtual Warehouse (for an agricultural and food district)
The Virtual Warehouse
Unitec offers advanced solutions for logistics and supplies (elogistics – eprocurement), proposing itself as an information-based integrator. Client companies also have the possibility of making use of services and instruments that allow common supplies and shared warehouses.
The Virtual Warehouse actually represents a possibility of optimizing the management of supplies and “replenishments”.
This solution was studied above all for all those companies or agencies that are part of one or more industrial districts or rings of a value chain.
New information and communication technologies actually offer the possibility of sharing information, goods and services.
An example is the management of commercial supplies, where a specialized and neutral operator in relation to all companies in the district, which therefore ensures and guarantees transparency for all participants in the plan, UNITEC exactly, creates a virtual warehouse made up of the sum of the businesses' individual warehouses and supplies, and provides centrally for the reordering activities of shared purchases.
The conditions for completion are:
- a logistical standard and communication
- a relative geographic proximity to client companies (50 km radius)
Supplies from each company participating in the plan decrease immediately, but paradoxically, their availability increases. The transformation of a “physical” object into a “virtual” one is carried out by combining the “possession of an asset” with the possibility of “access to an asset”.
The Virtual Warehouse is in fact an expression of the use that can be made of these possible transformations. It is the physical state of objects, as well as their virtual state, that are considered within the A.V., which is why we can define it as a physical-computational hybrid. Information sharing then makes it possible to rationalize and outsource the management of supplies, physically present in commercial warehouses.
Through the A.V. in fact, the supplies are represented by the sum of the members, made available by the companies participating in the same A.V. and that operate in the same territory. The model, therefore, finds its particular point of reference in industrial districts, where the possibility of sharing raw materials, semi-finished products and spare parts is given.
With A.V., all companies in the district are offered a reduction in the supplies to be stored, without however having to give up their ready availability in case of need, and this is thanks to a management, logistical and computational system that allows real-time control of all the information necessary for coordination and total management in the use of the same supplies. In case of use of supplies by a company, beyond the limits of its own availability, Unitec, through the computer system, immediately removes the goods from the warehouse of a company belonging to the same (or neighboring) district, and reorders the same goods to the supplier.
The entire district therefore works as a single factory where the A.V. It is physically made up of the private warehouses of the various companies, the management of which, however, is virtually entrusted to Unitec.
The savings obtained within industrial districts therefore have a major impact on the entire national value chain.
Companies can consequently reorganize their supplies depending on the exact availability of A.V. and your own operational needs. Participants can therefore request delivery of the materials they need online, 24 hours a day.
With A.V., therefore, supply management is standardized and obsolescence is recycled, allowing an increase in warehouse turnover and availability, previously linked to the existence of traditional management. Companies interconnected in such a system also have the guarantee of an availability of materials that goes well beyond what they previously had, with supplies not being present in their warehouses.
Obviously, the more companies participate in the implementation of such solutions, the smaller the quotas of materials to be stocked will be, and at the same time, the greater the quotas of materials available will be.
