Passauer Neue Presse, 2005-12-24

Simmeth System on expansion course

Burghausen (hw/ede). Simmeth System GmbH Burghausen reports an absolutely "stormy upside trend" in 2005: Markus Simmeth, managing partner, gave the information that "we exceeded the sales target aimed at for 2005 by 50 percent." For 2006, the Burghausen service provider for IT supported process analyses and development of individual management technology and Key Performance Indicator systems for all industrial and trade companies plans to double the sales, increase distribution activities and employ more personnel. "Simmeth System has processed 63 projects with more than 30 customers from all over Germany, Austria and Switzerland during the past two and a half years, " Markus Simmeth explains. The customers ranged from A like Altana Pharma AG in Konstanz and Berlin via MAN Nutzfahrzeuge AG in Munich to VAG Armaturen GmbH in Mannheim. Markus Simmeth sees a "highlight" of this year in the division "consulting services and competence" by winning the FH München [Advanced Technical College of Munich] as cooperation partner.

IT Production VI/2005, pages 22-23

Visualising Business Processes with KPI -Monitor: Focus on the Important Processes

Burghausen (Daniela Koch). In contrast to classical finance controlling, the KPI -Monitor developed by the company Simmeth System GmbH focuses on the operative processes in a factory on the basis of exactly calibrated indicators (Key Performance Indicators). In this way, the processes in a company can be viewed and evaluated on a day-to-day basis.

"The operative processes are registered by means of a close-meshed method, evaluated and then continuously improved by the KPI Monitor," explains Markus Simmeth, Managing Partner of Simmeth System GmbH. "Concise measured quantities constitute the basis for decisions and enable the establishment of operational guidelines for controlling the factory and manufacturing." In addition to complete transparency of all corporate processes, ranging from the procurement of raw materials to the delivery of products, the KPI Monitor enables companies to directly intervene on the operative level. For this purpose, data from the fields of procurement, production (construction/engineering on request as well), distribution and goods on stock are systemised and developed in a suitable manner. As far as the KPI Monitor is concerned, a monitoring system ensures data integrity. All important pieces of information about the business processes of the relevant company are summarised in a clearly arranged manner on a screen, the KPI Cockpit – presented on a day-to-day-basis, in the form of tables and charts and already provided with notes referring to deviations from set values (stoplights).

Opinions of Practitioners of the Trade

"A practically oriented tool for practically oriented applications in which the key users play an important role," this is how Markus Simmeth puts it in a nutshell. Customers and users regard closeness to real time, simplicity and clarity as far as the collection and presentation of the indicators is concerned, and the variety of individual evaluation options, e.g. simple export to Excel, as characteristics of the unique position of the KPI Monitor.

The company VAG-Armaturen that produces valves and fittings for the fields of water and waste water engineering with a staff of 750 in three international sites also uses the KPI Monitor. Dr. Klaus Stoesser, General Manager of VAG-Armaturen of the works in Mannheim and key user of the KPI Monitor, reports: "The KPI Monitor enables easy-to-use evaluations of all our processes. You do not need any support from the IT department for the immediately available evaluations any more; the application can even be used directly by the management as a result." His personal opinion: "Now we can monitor the process development on a daily basis and derive measures from this. This simple analysis covering the entire process was not possible for the management in PPS before." Robert Goerge, plant manager of the company Punker, a company active in the ventilation industry, as a KPI key user also appreciates the "simple and clearly structured determination and presentation of the indicators on a daily basis". "The indicators and the different evaluations enable us to identify and eliminate the causes of problems in a targeted manner and on a daily basis. This also applies to reorganisation measures, the changing of processes and settings, such as the dispositioning parameters. It is easier to verify the effects of changes," Goerge explains.

Information Service for all Hierarchic Levels

The KPI Monitor enables you to cut out "reporting rituals" and to simplify internal processes.

In addition, the KPI Monitor is fast gaining company-wide importance as an information service for all hierarchic levels: All KPIs can be represented with different gradings, ranging from maximum reduction (strategic planning) to the accountancy level (focussed approach). The evaluations are performed on call at least on a daily basis, individually tailored analyses of the business process simply at the touch of a button. Focussing on performance parameters with a direct influence on customers and costs results in an improvement of the corporate performance.

Employees Place Confidence in System

The KPI Monitor gives your staff access to always up-to-date and transparent information. The understandable development of the indicators arouses the employees’ interest and makes them place more confidence in them. A continuous process of improvement the prerequisites of which are established by an improved understanding of the processes is started, and the continuous checking of target reaching enables the tracking of the success of measures. According to Dr. Stoesser of VAG-Armaturen, the KPI Monitor is "thanks to data transparency, also very well suited for defining individual objectives for employees, measuring and analysing the reaching of targets afterwards." Every indicator can be broken down to the last detail (down to individual entries) by means of the KPI Cockpit on the basis of selectable criteria. In addition to the summarising of the indicators for the management by means of the KPI Cockpit, it is also easy to track data down to individual order items, suppliers, cost centres or manufacturing orders, customer order items and individual customers.

Passauer Neue Presse, 2005-06-11

Young Businessman Established

Simmeth System GmbH created ten jobs up to now

Burghausen (red). For Mayor Hans Steindl, the IT service and management consultancy company Simmeth System GmbH is a "fine example demonstrating the attractiveness of the site Burghausen for young and dynamic companies". Recently the office building in the trade park Lindach B 8 was officially presented to the public in the framework of a small celebration, on the occasion of which General Manager Markus Simmeth announced that he had created three more jobs in the past three months.

In the presence of approximately 40 invited guests, comprising politicians, representatives of society, trade and industry of Burghausen, the founder of the company and General Manager Markus Simmeth (39) presented the company that he had founded alone and in very small rooms two and a half years ago and that has meanwhile settled, with ten employees, in the trade park of Lindach. The business idea of Simmeth System GmbH was a "combination of management consulting and IT supported operational analyses and the software development of individual management technology".

Passauer Neue Presse, 2005-05-14

Simmeth System: Indicators Pave the Way to Success

Expansion with IT supported analyses – for captains in the cockpit to consultants and company chiefs

Burghausen (ede). Visualising business processes and enabling transparency for corporate decisions, these are the primary performance targets of the young company “Simmeth System GmbH“ in Burghausen. The service company with head office in Lindach was founded as a one-man business only three years ago and employs a staff of ten in the meantime.

Markus Simmeth, founder and General Manger, describes the entire business segment as IT supported operational analyses and the development of management technology for all types of industries and commercial enterprises. The company focuses on the fields of corporate management, purchasing and procurement, production, planning, distribution and controlling.

The core product is the trademark-protected KPI Monitor. This KPI Monitor (KPI: Key Performance Indicator, therefore a monitor for key figures within a company or a process), represents all indicators relevant for the control of a company – with the option of reducing them strongly in order to check strategic perspectives or to focus them in detail and broken down to the accountancy level for detailed analyses. These indicators are defined together with the customers and indicated according to the relevant requirements. The list of customers of the young company comprises the entire alphabet of German firms, ranging from Altana Pharma AG, Oerlikon and Paul Wurth S.A. to Raytheon Marine and Willi Stürtz Maschinenbau GmbH. Main market areas are the regions around Hamburg, Cologne, but also the area around Lake Constance up to now. There is a reason for this: Markus Simmeth, born in Burghausen and graduate of a local grammar school, had worked as a management consultant for the company Wassermann AG before he founded his company and continued to develop existing customer contacts on the basis of a cooperation agreement after he had founded his own company.

Further business segments are ongoing workshops on the determination of indicators and process optimisation as well as the development of an online supplier evaluation. The objective is to enable companies to evaluate their suppliers by means of forms defined by themselves on the basis of completely configurable indicators, this evaluation also being possible on the basis of indicators taken from partner systems.

The pilot phase of another project with spectacular perspectives is launched just now. For a group customer from North Germany, Simmeth System develops a premium wage system that includes at the same time the change-over from a 35-hours week to a 38-hour week and is, according to Markus Simmeth, welcomed even by a major industrial trade union.

For the test phase and the pilot phase, the company and its customers agree to maintain strict silence. One of the special features of the system is that not only the fact that an employee is merely present at this workplace and is present there for a longer period of time is honoured, but also the performance within a group and a process, and this can again be visualised by means of the key performance indicators (KPI).

The visualisation of performance factors, such as the optimisation of the hours of operation or the perfectioning of the processing of work pieces, is intended to make available a control tool to employees of companies that enables them to check their own performance profile and their position as far as premium development is concerned.

In addition, compliance with deadlines and perfection are two features that Markus Simmeth regards as pillars of his corporate philosophy. He came to appreciate these qualities in the course of his own, somewhat extraordinary personal career as a captain for private yachts. After having taken his high-school diploma in Denver and the German Abitur in Burghausen, Markus Simmeth perfected his knowledge of the Spanish language during a language stay in Spain, completed a training for captains for private yachts at the same time and worked as a skipper on privately owned German yachts on all seas of the world for six years then.

During this time still, he started a business administration degree at the Open University of Hagen and took his final examinations in the year 1998. In between, he also worked as an associate editor of an Anglo-German real estate magazine in Majorca and as a freelance consultant for a management consulting company in Starnberg. After taking his degree, he worked as a commercial manager for the company Elektro Kreutzpointner in Burghausen for two years, until he found another job with the company Wassermann AG in 2000 to work there as a consultant, and set up his own business in the year 2002.

The young team in the head office in Lindach consists of employees from Upper Bavaria and Lower Bavaria, from Upper Palatinate and Saxonia. The team comprises, among others, three application developers and database developers, one business economist working as a management consultant, one assistant to the management and one general manager working as a consultant.