RHI AG is world market leader in the development, production and service of refractory materials. With 8,400 employees worldwide, RHI develops and manufactures customized refractory products and system solutions at the best value for money, including the best service in the industry.
RHI AG, headquartered in Vienna, has put its trust in SASP (Single Authorization for Simplified Procedures) and the software from MIC since the beginning of 2008.
For the major project SASP implementation and automation in the production sites in Austria and Germany, RHI has chosen cooperation with MIC Customs Solutions. Roland Truntschnig, Head of Customs Division of RHI AG, points out the reasons for it such as, “MIC has an excellent reputation, well-known reference customers, could convincingly respond to all questions and has already a system that is in use worldwide. MIC is the most experienced provider of solutions of this kind.”
What actually is SASP?
The "Single Authorization for Simplified Procedures" is a procedure for trade facilitation. It allows traders to carry out their customs transactions in the Member State, in which they are established, regardless of where the goods are located at the time of transfer.
SASP is a cross-border approval/authorization centrally located in an EU Member State (the supervising Member State). With such an authorization simplified declarations, local customs procedures and customs procedures with economic impact can be handled.
The method offers significant advantages for companies with import or export volumes from or in non-EU countries, such as:
- There is only one location for all customs formalities for the approved countries.
- Pooling of staff resources and expertise (customs competence) at one site leads to economies of scale.
- Contact is solely made with their own customs authorities, regarding the release of the goods and all decisions and notifications which concern this procedure.
- The Customs activities are handled in the national language.
- A single technical environment is sufficient, there is only one interface to the company's system
- All articles have to be classified only once.
MIC SASP AT/DE – a great success for RHI
The full automation of the Austrian e-zoll processing (supervising customs system) with the SASP connection of the exports of German RHI locations by MIC products brought a number of simplifications for RHI. The system is seamlessly integrated in SAP. The users in the shipping points of the factories are creating their deliveries in the SAP application. A time-controlled process imports the data via the MIC-SAP interface to the MIC export integration platform. The shipment will be automatically created and a customs declaration will be sent to the authorities. After just a few minutes, the Export Accompanying Document (EAD) is returned in electronic form by the e-zoll authority system. The EAD is automatically printed at the appropriate site, or sent by email to the respective shipping point. Whereas several authorizations were required in the past, it is now sufficient to use one.
Roland Truntschnig reports”From the Competence Center at the RHI site in Veitsch only a handful of employees oversee the system with which over 35,000 customs declarations are processed, a major advantage of a centralized system with global coverage – everything isall together . The effort for this is relatively low because hardly any faults occur in the system, which is also due in part to our good master data quality. ”
RHI expands SASP implementation by Great Britain
For several years now, RHI has pursued a strategy to centralize its IT processes based on a group-wide SAP roll-out, accompanied by a target to reach higher tax security level for its export businesses. Roland Truntschnig explains, “MIC SASP makes a significant contribution because it is seamlessly integrated in SAP and electronically provides the necessary export certificate to the authority as proof. Electronic processing is much safer than the former paper based processes, where the required export certificates frequently did not arrive. Therefore, we have set the goal to connect all our EU factories with SAP connection also to MIC SASP.”
In October 2012, the kick-off for the SASP connection to the factories in the UK was carried out with the same requirements as for the existing AT/DE installation, thus an almost complete automation of the export processing. Roland Truntschnig reported on the project, “The whole project management with MIC Customs Solutions was straightforward. Based on the experience with the processes for AT/DE already in operation for years, the integration and test phase could be kept very short, as well as training costs could be reduced to a minimum. In total, staff costs as well as the actual time spent on the project for the UK roll-out was minimal. Since April 2013, our UK plants now also receive the export accompanying document and other necessary export documentation automatically and RHI AT gets the electronic export certificate at the end.”