Rittal partners with EDITEL to optimize its production processes

Technology needs data: control cabinet market leader Rittal Austria relies on Electronic Data Interchange

For a highly engineered product portfolio like Rittal’s, reliable data and their efficient distribution are key. To achieve just that, the company has been relying on EDI technology for more than 15 years. The market leader in the control cabinet industry has now decided to partner with EDITEL in Austria.

The product portfolio of Rittal, the world’s leading system supplier, includes configurable control cabinets, intelligent cooling systems, power distribution systems, machines for control cabinet processing and wire harnessing as well as innovative IT solutions ranging from IT racks to modular data centers. Digitalization is a top priority for Rittal, not only when it comes to the company’s products and solutions, but also for its entire corporate management: “Our goal is to incorporate data early in the engineering process and benefit from them in downstream activities. The shortage of skilled workers, which is an ever-present challenge, can also be mitigated by digitalization and automation. And it goes without saying that digitalization is also paramount for our internal processes, including order processing, among many others. This eliminates a lot of administrative work and allows us to focus on relevant tasks,” said Marcus Schellerer, managing director of Rittal Austria. He added: “Our clients are the main beneficiaries of the time gained, as we have more bandwidth for comprehensive solution consulting, but also for handling last-minute requests.”

Optimized goods movement with EDI

“In the areas of goods procurement and delivery, we have to process large data volumes. Precision and accuracy are of utmost importance for that,” explains Julia Svoboda from the organizational development department at Rittal Austria. “We have been successfully using EDI to achieve just that for 15 years. We use EDI to transfer all information from Rittal Austria to our headquarters in Germany. What used to be done laboriously by manually sending PDF files is now a fully automated process. EDI processing is a real blessing for us,” Ms. Svoboda said. Rittal also relies on EDI when working with freight forwarders, which not only speeds up the delivery processes, but also makes it easy to check directly with the freight forwarder before any order is sent to a client. “All processes benefit from our EDI connection. When clients order via EDI, we no longer have to enter the data manually. This saves us a lot of time and increases our efficiency, while our clients also benefit from EDI processing. For example, current data are effortlessly available to them, and we import delivery dates directly into their systems in no time,” Ms. Svoboda added.

A new partnership that’s off to a great start: Rittal and EDITEL

Electronic Data Interchange at Rittal was previously handled exclusively by the internal IT department in Germany. Since the total of connected clients now amounts to 30, the department has reached its limits and Rittal Austria eventually turned to EDITEL as an additional EDI service provider for the implementation of additional connections.

“The production and distribution of Rittal’s complex products requires numerous individual steps. Without digitalization, this process can be slow and prone to errors. This is why Rittal has been relying on EDI for a long time. “We are very pleased about this new collaboration in Austria, which happened fast and smoothly as a result of the good experience Rittal previously had with EDI. It was and continues to be a great pleasure for us to work with Rittal”, said Gerd Marlovits, CEO of EDITEL Austria, commenting on the successful and pleasant collaboration.

Rittal is also very pleased with the experience: “This was the fastest and most straightforward EDI connection I have ever witnessed,” said Julia Svoboda. “It was great to work with EDITEL. Their team stands out for their high subject-matter expertise, but above all for maximum reliability, which is not always a matter of course.” This is certainly a good basis on which Ms. Svoboda intends to build in the future: “Our clients are only gradually converting their ERP systems. As a result, we have a long way to go in terms of EDI, and we are glad to have EDITEL as our trusted partner.”

The press release „Technology needs data: control cabinet market leader Rittal Austria relies on Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) from EDITEL Austria“ and accompanying images are also available for download.