thyssenkrupp Rasselstein + Celonis

thyssenkrupp Rasselstein uses Celonis to gain full transparency and tighter control over its end-to-end supply chain, helping the company manage material shortages at speed, predict delivery dates more accurately, shorten lead times, and improve cash flow.

“Outstanding premium products” and “excellent service” – thyssenkrupp Rasselstein's mission can be summarized in one word: quality.

Renowned globally for delivering premium-grade packaging steel, the company serves over 400 customers in more than 80 countries, making it Europe’s largest production site for packaging steel.

With a longstanding history – the company is over 250 years old – Rasselstein is used to economic changes. But in recent years the speed of change has picked up. “Globally the steel industry is under pressure. We need to become faster to meet customer expectations.” explains Mario Kossmann, VP Digital Solutions.

To adapt to new demands and circumstances the company is set on digitizing steel production. “We need better processes to get fit for the future,” says Dr. Michael Pullen, CFO of Rasselstein. “And digitalization helps us to make our processes more efficient and make the most out of limited resources”. In recent months, the focus has been placed on the company's supply chain.

The three major goals:

1. Reducing manual effort and raising productivity
2. Optimization of working capital
3. Improving delivery reliability for the company’s end customers

Not an easy feat, given the company has to deal with over two centuries of complexity. The production site in Andernach, Germany, the largest of its kind in the world, is powered by more than 300 systems – a breeding ground for silos and disruption. What’s more, Rasselstein’s processes are very complex as they also involve its mother company, Steel Europe. “We get most of our raw material from Steel Europe,” explains Dr. Tanja Lommel, VP Sales Planning & Logistics. “ Regarding their systems we were more or less blind”.

Process Intelligence turned out to be the solution to finally gain end-to-end transparency and “bridge the gap” between the two companies. With the Celonis Process Intelligence Platform, Rasselstein can understand how the business truly runs, enabling teams to boost fact-based decision making and pro-actively steer the supply chain — with great results for delivery reliability, production planning, and cash flow.

Full transparency: Setting up a connected supply chain

An avid user of Celonis industry-leading process mining technology since 2022 (watch the team talk about their great process mining results here) Rasselstein applied Celonis to the supply chain. This gave the company a digital twin of its supply chain processes. Kossmann and his Center of Excellence connected near real-time data from Steel Europe with Rasselstein’s Production Planning systems inside Celonis, creating what the team calls the “connected supply chain”.

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This gives stakeholders a single source of truth for easy-to-action insights. “A few seconds and we have a dashboard to answer all of our questions,” says Dr. Lommel.

Unlocking productivity gains and working capital improvements

With this newly gained transparency, production planners at Rasselstein can collaborate better with Steel Europe. On average the delivery of raw materials takes about four to six weeks. Pre-Celonis this meant that any delays or deliveries of wrong materials jeopardized production plans and delivery reliability at Rasselstein.

Now, with clear insights into where raw material orders stand, production planners can proactively steer deliveries from Steel Europe to prioritize orders at risk – before they turn into a problem or materials run out. Meanwhile, Celonis machine learning algorithms help teams to more accurately calculate and communicate delivery dates for end customers.

The results:

• Drastically improved prediction of delivery dates
• Lower safety stocks
• Predicted working capital improvements in the double-digit million range

Becoming a trailblazer for innovation

Today, Celonis is live in ten processes and covers more than 50 use cases across Procure-to-Pay, Order-to-Cash, Inventory and Warehouse Management, Accounts Receivable, and more. Rasselstein and its Center of Excellence have turned into major drivers for new technologies and capabilities within the group but also the Celonis community.

The company was one of the first customers to implement Celonis Action Flows to automate repetitive tasks. Action Flows are rule-based automations that can trigger actions directly within operational systems like SAP, Oracle, and ServiceNow.

Here’s how these work at Rasselstein. Pre-Celonis, the team was putting a lot of manual effort into creating purchase orders from purchase requests. Now, Kossmann and his team have set up an automation to create purchase orders when specific criteria are met. Celonis comes with hundreds of pre-built and customizable Action Flows that enable Kossmann to “save manual effort and raise productivity.”

From ‘old economy’ to high-speed change

The company’s key to success is a strong focus on community building. “Once employees realize they are part of the solution, they start to address their own ideas in a continuous improvement cycle,” says Dr. Lommel.

Company events like “Digital Days” play a key role in getting more people on board. During the two-day hackathons, teams with diverse backgrounds from Procurement, Order Management, Warehousing, and Inventory Management work with each other to build low-code solutions to their challenges and present them to the C-suite.

These solutions include the “Shipping Emission Reduction” App (co-created with Celonis), which optimizes truck logistics and improves scope 3 emissions. “Digital transformation is not easy in an ‘old economy’ company. But with Celonis, all our departments want to be part of the journey,” says Kossmann.

• Click to read more about shipping emissions reporting and reduction

With such a strong internal drive for improvement and innovation, what’s next on the agenda?