Germany
December 2022
Interview with Sophia-Christina Sahlfeld
In this article the implementation of ABS for W. von Borries Eckendorf and their experiences with ABS are described:
W. von Borries-Eckendorf GmbH & Co. KG is a medium sized, family-owned company with a tradition in plant breeding for more than 170 years. The company is working in breeding and the production of arable crops: barley, wheat and oilseed rape. The team is comprised of 38 employees plus trainees in the professional field of plant technologies. The commercial sales of the varieties is done by Saaten-Union and Rapool.
At W. von Borries-Eckendorf Sophia Sahlfeld is working with a team of five people, responsible for the whole workflow concerning seed production planning, purchase, sales and quality management.
The main task of the production department is to produce pre- basic and basic seeds varieties of barley and wheat. Those seeds are sold via a licence system in several European countries.
W. von Borries-Eckendorf is a member of SAATEN-UNION. Two other companies of the group, Hybro and Nordsaat are also using ABS. Their references and examples made von Borries-Eckendorf decide that ABS was right for them, and not their old ERP system.
The implementation of ABS started during 2021. Due to COVID-19 situation, most of the first meetings were set-up remotely via MS Teams. The Go Live with ABS was “just in time” before harvest 2022.
In W. von Borries-Eckendorf 4 – 5 people make use of ABS in the workflow from receiving of the goods until invoicing of the sold seeds. ABS helps in the fields of receiving, cleaning, processing, job orders and invoicing. For next season they plan to work with the ABS production app to include all relevant information from their multiplication fields into ABS from the beginning.
For the workflow, an inclusion of the weighbridge into the ABS system was essential. These weight data are the basis for accounting to the grower and a first estimate of the seeds for the sales department. The way of working is quite simple: the truck is weighed when it is loaded with seed and when it is empty. Then the weight of the empty truck is removed to get the exact weight of the goods. From that moment on Von Borries-Eckendorf can work with these data in ABS without doing anything by hand in a second step. This gives assurance in the process of weighing itself and reduces the work of data management.
During the implementation and after the Go Live, the ABS consultant Sander Spil was always available when there were had questions and problems. When he was not available, we were helped by colleagues from around the world. When there was an error in the late afternoon or evening, which had to be fixed, Sophia had a video call with the ABS Support consultant Richard Kohler in Canada.
W. von Borries-Eckendorf is happy to work in a group of several Saaten-Union companies with ABS. This gives the possibility to learn from and with each other and develop functionalities for cereal crops together.
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