Stora Enso

The client
Stora Enso is an integrated paper, packaging and forest products company that is a world market leader in the production of publication and fine papers, packaging boards and wood products. The Group has an annual production capacity of 15.7 million tonnes of paper and board and 7.4 million cubic meters of sawn wood products, including 2.8 million cubic meters of value-added products. Serving mainly business-to-business customers through its own global sales and marketing network, Stora Enso’s main markets are Europe, North America and Asia.

The business need
Stora Enso is in the process of streamlining its global transport and distribution systems to enhance efficiency and improve service to customers. In its transport and distribution centers in offices in Gothenburg, Sweden, and Hamburg, Germany, the Group wanted to reduce paperwork and unnecessary repetition of tasks such as the input of information. With no direct link with the Group’s carriers, duplication of information was creating unnecessary errors and slowing down booking processes and the issuing of shipping instructions.

Container shipments per year
Stora Enso’s total annual tonnage out of Sweden and Hamburg is currently more than 1,400,000 tons, with annual container tonnage at about 1,200,000 tons, number of TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) at more than 98,000 and number of bills of lading at more than 13,700. Globally, Stora Enso uses about 26 different carriers.

Why Stora Enso chose INTTRA’s I-Link
In looking to enhance electronic communications with its carriers, Stora Enso recognized that INTTRA was the system to which the most carriers were connected. Stora Enso chose the I-Link EDI/XML connection because the volumes it was dealing with made this type of link more viable than a web-based solution.

INTTRA’s offer
The INTTRA-Link provides the tools that enable a supply chain system to connect to all participating carrier transactions via EDI. INTTRA’s I-Link team, located around the world, guides clients through the integration process and helps them change their processes to meet benefit from the industry standards established by INTTRA. Using INTTRA reduces the costs of owning a private network using next-generation e-commerce tools to creates efficient processes. It also adds value through the availability of new tools and capabilities.

The integration project
Between its mills and its carriers worldwide, Stora Enso has a complex supply chain. Different carriers needed to use different interfaces. The idea was to minimise the workload and to automate as many of the processes as possible. During the integration period, systems and processes have been aligned – with, for example, changes to internal coding and keyboard alterations made to reflect different national languages – to allow for seamless communication between Stora Enso’s transport and distribution centers and its carriers.

The benefits
The new system has greatly reduced the time it takes to issue booking requests and shipping instructions, ultimately delivering cost savings to Stora Enso. "Now you don’t have to sit and wait when the person that you need to speak to is on the line," says Anna Wilhelmsson, service center coordinator at Stora Enso’s Baseport Service Center. "You just send the booking. So you get more shipments done a day and you have more time to deal with the bigger issues."

The next step
Soon the system will be rolled out to Stora Enso’s headquarters in Helsinki, Finland. In addition, over the coming year, Stora Enso aims to get all eight of its mills sending information seamlessly to the INTTRA system via their Fenix sales and order-handling system. One mill is already using the system, and once the other mills follow, the Stora Enso transport and distribution centers will become simply the hubs forwarding booking requests and shipping instructions on to the carriers.

"That’s where we’ll have the most benefit," says Wilhelmsson. "Because the mills are the first line of information. They know what to enter and it will then be in the system from the beginning, so it won’t have to be retyped. That will reduce a lot of problems."