For 130 years, the traditional Kneipp® brand has stood for effective, innovative and natural products for well-being and health based on the holistic teachings of Sebastian Kneipp. It is therefore a particular concern of Kneipp to apply sustainable strategies in the manufacture of its products and to reduce its own carbon footprint step by step.
Kneipp's broad product range requires a considerable logistical effort in the procurement of the required raw materials. This effort is reflected in the CO2 footprint of the product and ultimately of the entire company.
If this effort can be reduced with the help of coherent and intelligently optimized SAP master data, this also improves the environmental balance.
The idea behind this is to record the exact cosmetic ingredients of a raw material in terms of quantity and to reduce the logistical effort involved in procurement and processing.
In addition to local CO2 neutrality in Scope 1 and 2, an important long-term corporate goal is also to reduce emissions in Scope 3.
It quickly became clear that the possibilities in the SAP standard for this special analysis had been exhausted.
Detailed analysis of the raw materials used
At Kneipp, a data analysis was required for the CO² calculation of the raw materials used, which shows the total quantities of the so-called INCI ingredients (International Nomenclature of Cosmetic Ingredients) per supplier from all incoming goods.
Kneipp successfully uses the APICON Data Master for data analysis in various areas of the company. The APICON Data Master is a certified data cockpit that is fully integrated into SAP.
The first step is to check whether a material is a raw material. The corresponding supplier is determined from the goods receipt postings in SAP. In the next step, each raw material must be broken down into its INCI components. For example, the material “Perfume oil fresh mint” consists of 8 components according to INCI. This is done using the material specification stored in SAP. At the end, the quantities per supplier are totaled for all ingredients. The previously time-consuming Excel evaluation is now completed in the APICON Data Master with just a few mouse clicks. The data determined in this way is immediately available for the desired optimization.
"After discussions with several providers, we very quickly opted for APICON. One of the main reasons was that the APICON Data Master is an add-on that is integrated into SAP and does not require any data exports or data reimports. We also like the modular structure, which allows us to only use the modules that we actually need."
"In addition to the pilot project, further use cases in data analysis have developed in the meantime. In order to maintain continuous data quality, Kneipp would like to use APICON Data Master mail dispatch in the future. This idea and other use cases are to be implemented at Kneipp with APICON this year."
“Everything we need to stay healthy, nature has given us in abundance.” - Ever since the company was founded by Sebastian Kneipp, the connection to nature has been an integral part of Kneipp's DNA. From its beginnings in a pharmacy in Würzburg, the company has grown into an international company with around 700 employees worldwide. There are around 500 in Germany alone. Kneipp now sells products in 18 countries around the world.
"After using and implementing various projects for a long time, we can say that the decision to use APICON and the APICON Data Master was the right one. Task management, for example, enables us to detect and correct errors automatically. The data analysis enables us to carry out complex evaluations that would otherwise only be possible via detours in SAP. In addition, there is the excellent consulting for new projects and the exemplary support during the implementation phase."