The Spanish company Adix has more than 20 years of experience in producing a wide range of industrial explosion protection systems with a focus on the power industry, mainly in the areas of food, chemistry, and pharmacy. Moreover, they offer consulting, training, and maintenance.
After having introduced Microsoft Dynamics as ERP in the company and having worked with it for some time, it became clear relatively quickly that an additional scheduling tool was needed to better manage the production processes.
Tecon, which is Adix’s Microsoft Dynamics partner, thus recommended NETRONIC as a provider of visual scheduling extensions for Dynamics 365 Business Central. Adix looked at the options provided by NETRONIC and decided on the Visual Advanced Production Scheduler (VAPS).
Working with advanced production scheduling software led to
an improvement in delivery time accuracy by up to 90 %
in the wake of this, significant savings in transportation costs
a more stable schedule, fewer ad-hoc schedule changes, and thus comprehensively improved employee satisfaction thanks to a better, now also longer-term, plannability of the production
Hear what Ignacio Garrido Ceca, Managing Director at Adix, has to say about the VAPS:
The wide range of components to produce and the fact that customers often need them at quite short notice poses major challenges for production planning at Adix. According to Ignacio Garrido Ceca, the planning of production processes often led to “a lot of frustration”, for both customers and the company, especially concerning the inaccurateness of delivery time commitments. “We had nearly no on-time deliveries”, reports Ignacio.
In the beginning, the company used Excel sheets for their production planning and when this didn’t work, they tried to integrate macro-based Excel sheets with their company ERP. But no matter which approaches – a certain degree of chaos remained. As Ignacio Garrido Ceca recalls: “We were not really controlling our purchases nor our production.”
“And we were almost never on time” - Ignacio’s statement sums up the problems that arose from planning the production in a hand-made, and not digitized way. As the company was growing and with this, the number of orders was of course increasing, the inadequateness of their approach became clearer and clearer. This was even more frustrating, as the company has good products on offer and was running the risk of losing business because they had “… a lot of unsatisfied customers because of delivery problems”.
The production process was identified as being the cause of the problems and the Adix team realized that it was high time for a new ERP system. So, they decided for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. But after having used the ERP for some time, it became clear that this step was right, but was not yet enough. Adix still “needed a powerful, but easy-to-understand scheduling tool.”
The production scheduling software should be able to
Tecon, Adix’s ERP vendor, and NETRONIC have been partnering for a long while, and “that's how we came to NETRONIC because the partner we use for our ERP is also a distributor of NETRONIC.” After some thorough investigating “…we decided to install NETRONIC software for scheduling”, as Ignacio states.
Having used the VAPS for a little more than a year now, Ignacio can report significant changes and improvements.
Estimate and keep delivery dates
This really was the biggest problem the company had to face and with the usage of the VAPS, it has been solved. As Ignacio states “we are coming from almost no on-time deliveries to 80% to 90% deliveries on time”. The sales department was also happy because for the first time they “could inform our customers about the expected delivery”.
Improved customer satisfaction
Being finally able to estimate delivery dates also resulted in happier customers, because, as Ignacio puts it, “planning everything correctly and to deliver on time (…) is very important for our customers.”
Significant savings in transportation costs
Before working with NETRONIC, most of the deliveries at Adix were made via air freight because, as Ignacio explains, “we already used a lot of time for the production and so there was no time for transportation.” And due to the pandemic, transportation became still more expensive. Now, with the VAPS, the newly structured production process has become considerably faster and this, of course, leaves more time for the shipping of the products which can now be done in line and by containers - this, of course, being much cheaper than air freight. And what is more important, the time saved in production allows for long-term planning of shipment and this also results in lower costs. That way, advanced visual production scheduling led to a significant decrease in (transportation) costs.
Happier employees
Scheduling the production makes the employees’ daily work much easier. Before the VAPS, due to the lack of transparency, the staff members
“were changing the priorities every day. And then you are wasting a lot of time and you are using more time than expected for the production of every component or every equipment”, says Ignacio. "With the clarity the VAPS brings to the planning process, the employees now have a clear schedule and with this gain continuity and stability for their work." As Ignacio sums up “…it's easier for them and they are more relaxed."
Ignacio is pleased with the good cooperation:
“The VAPS fundamentally changed the way we manage and run our production. On the one hand, it gives us transparency and the right tools to achieve stable and seamless production processes. On the other hand, it allows us to react to unplanned incidents quickly and to make the right decisions fast. However, it is not just the product. It is also the people: Any time we asked, NETRONIC found solutions. It is very easy to communicate with the team, they are responsive, they listen to our needs and come back with ideas how to help us solve our challenges."
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