Founded in May 2003, BMW Brilliance Automotive Ltd. is a joint venture between BMW and a major financial and automotive partner. Its operations include production, R&D, sales, after-sales services, and purchasing of BMW automobiles. BMW Brilliance has a state of the art production base, which has an extensive sales and service network.
CMT is a key supplier to BMW Brilliance, providing efficient, end-to-end supply chain solutions ranging from import and export trade to land transport, warehousing, and distribution.
The Challenge: Automating Business Process Integrations via OFTP
When BMW Brilliance sought to improve its supply chain, capture efficiencies, and drive cost savings with business process automation, the company looked to onboard suppliers into its EDI processes.
To meet the requirements of one of their most important customers, CMT set out to integrate OFTP connectivity with the BMW Brilliance logistics system. This would ultimately help the logistics firm standardize daily work, meet management goals, and improve overall supply efficiency.
The solution would need to instantly feed logistics information back to BMW Brilliance's system while providing an easy-to-use interface design that makes deployment and configuration easy.
The Solution: A Robust, Seamless OFTP Integration
CMT opted to leverage CData Arc for OFTP capabilities. CData Arc provides a high performance, reliable, and fully scalable product that simplifies the process of producing, consuming, and integrating data. It's a simple and effective middleware that helps users efficiently transfer information and integrate solutions without added complexity.
CData Arc, officially certified by Odette, fully supports SSL, encryption, signature, and compression. It securely handles all data transmissions, enabling automated integration between BMW Brilliance and its logistics partner.
The integration works as follows:
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Received document EDI data (waybill information) is parsed, stored in an intermediate database, and displayed through CMT's system management interface.
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The supplier can then automatically begin logistics delivery based on the waybill information. Then, the logistics information management interface is added to the OFTP Connector. Now, the logistics status information can be changed through the interface, and the corresponding data is added to the intermediate database. Next, an EDI file is generated and sent to BMW.
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The EDI message standard required by BMW Brilliance is the VDA standard. The EDI document issued by BMW Brilliance to its partners is the waybill that BMW sends.
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The EDI documents received by BMW Brilliance are delivered to CMT, which instantly feeds back logistics information to BMW Brilliance.
The Results: Efficiency in the Supply Chain
The direct connection of EDI to BMW Brilliance via CData Arc OFTP saves time and money for both BMW Brilliance and its partner. The integration improves supply chain efficiency and reduces inaccuracies from human error in the process.
The seamless integration of CData Arc with CMT's ERP system provides the perfect solution for safety, efficiency, reliability, and low-cost EDI connectivity.
