About Multiscience

History
Multiscience GmbH was founded in 1986 by Prof. Dr. Heinz Isermann; at the time, Mr. Isermann held a chair for business administration and operations research at Bielefeld University and was regularly asked for advice in this position by companies in the region for solving issues regarding packing optimisation.

For the first time in Germany, innovative mathematical procedures for solving different packing problems were developed in numerous research projects at the university, which were published in renowned professional journals. However, for the practical utilisation of these procedures, it is necessary to meet the specific requirements of the users as well as complex user interfaces in the software system in addition to “pure” mathematics. The specific requirements of every-day work and continuity with respect to customers’ contact persons for cooperating with the customers cannot be provided by a scientific institute, where the staffing changes regularly, since employees are exclusively employed on the basis of temporary work contracts.

By founding the company Multiscience, the basis was provided for continuous development work and long-term user support. The name Multiscience shows the interdisciplinary way of thinking of the company founder. For instance, the company’s employees have graduated in the fields of logistics, packaging technology, IT, electrical engineering or economics.

The first customers of Multiscience were Bertelsmann AG in Gütersloh, for whom a software tool for the optimised selection of shipping containers for reader circle shipments, Dr. August Oetker KG in Bielefeld as well as Langnese Iglo in Hamburg, for whom the prototype of the pallet loading and packaging optimisation software “MultiPack” was developed. After a first appearance at “InterPack” in 1987, “MultiPack” was presented as standard software for the first time at “PacPro” in Düsseldorf in 1988 and is used by over 1,500 companies inside and outside Germany today in countless different variants.

Current activities
The product range of Multiscience includes the modular software systems “MultiPack” for equal-sized as well as “MultiMix” for heterogeneous products. These systems are used for planning and optimisation in the fields of packaging development, logistics and supply chain management as well as increasingly also in the context of CIL (computer integrated logistics) for controlling fully-automatic palletising and order picking systems.

The necessity of adjusting the software to the specific requirements of the respective customers was clear to Multiscience, particularly, because the customer benefit can already be increased significantly oftentimes with small customer-specific additions to the standard tools.

Outlook
Our customers appreciate our potential for innovation and the continuity in our cooperation. The continuing further development of the well-tried software tools as well as software innovation for new areas of application will continue to be the focus of activities for Multiscience. On the basis of more than 20 years of experience, Multiscience will continue to be a competent partner for implementing tailor-made software systems for packaging development, logistics, supply chain management (SCM) and efficient consumer response (ECR) in the future.