Synchronized Applications Integrated Landscape – The name of the project, better known by its acronym SAIL, refers to the wide-ranging standardization of optimized processes and the IT systems behind them at Freudenberg Sealing Technologies (FST). Launched in 2007, the SAIL Project was successfully concluded in 2023 with the integration of the last two locations, in Switzerland and Mexico.
It all started in 2007 with a customer satisfaction analysis. As in earlier years, it revealed clear weaknesses compared to the competition in logistical processes and the response times to customer requests. To increase customer satisfaction, FST decided to analyze its core processes and then elevate the best processes for particular business situations to the standard across the company.
These business processes were to be supported with a uniform IT system. In 2007, this was a revolutionary concept for FST. To that point, each location had defined its own processes and developed its own IT solutions. Ordering processes, accounting systems, the software used, training, and the reporting system were hardly ever the same. Hardly anything was comparable. That meant there were a great many interfaces with high support costs and correspondingly tedious reconciliation processes.
All that has changed with the conclusion of the SAIL Project. Since then, a uniform SAP system has created comprehensive standardized processes everywhere. SAIL has reduced complexity within the company and increased transparency. When it comes to their content and timing, monthly closings today are based on the same model throughout the Business Group. That makes it possible to compare results. In the reporting system, many reports take place automatically. Key operating figures such as throughput times are stated in exactly the same way at all the locations.
“The success of individual products or customer relationships can be evaluated based on well-founded data,” said Ludger Neuwinger-Heimes, FST’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO). “This improvement in data quality and availability leads to qualified assessments and foundations for decision-making to steer the company in the right direction. We have also become significantly faster, more precise and, all in all, more efficient.”
Today, 16 years after the start of the project, FST’s world has merged together on the system side and today reflects its global organization. Customers are benefiting from more secure, leaner and faster processes, including shorter response times to inquiries, faster throughput times, and improvements in delivery reliability. Processes and systems are harmonized.
