For more than 25 years, Sofel bvba from Ronse in Belgium has been providing blending and packing of car cosmetics and industrial cleaning products. Their product range and production capabilities go from acids to high alkaline products, over oil-in-water and water-in-oil emulsions, to solvents and alcohols.
Most of their products are sold under private labels.
Before using Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, the company managed their purchases, sales, and production with a basic and outdated software solution. When this product reached its end of life, they were forced to look for another solution.
The company now uses Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central together with some of Harmonize It's 3rd party solutions for the chemical industry. Production scheduling is done with the help of NETRONIC’s Visual Production Scheduler (VPS). This led to:
It soon became clear that the way production scheduling is handled in Business Central did not sufficiently fit their production processes because for some steps in their planning it was too cumbersome and hence meant too much work for their planner. They urgently needed an “integrated solution without any extra (Excel) work, and with high visual representation of the data,” says Paul Den Haese, owner of Sofel.
Sofel needed a production planning tool that
Their ERP partner, Harmonize It helped them to look for an adequate tool and Sofel quickly opted for NETRONIC’s Visual Production scheduler, because, as Paul puts it “the visual aspect was what triggered us, and it is what we wanted at a reasonable price.”
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The company has not regretted their decision. They have gained the desired flexibility that is, according to Paul “certainly one of the major advantages.” Due to the uncertain situation of the last years (limited availability of raw materials and/or longer lead times than initially confirmed), “it is of utmost importance that production plans can be altered very easily and quickly,” as Paul explains.
"The solution is nicely integrated with Business Central without having to build expensive interfaces or without the need to copy data back and forth. It is, data-wise, always updated, accurate and complete. It is also a visual solution which makes planning a lot easier, as it is quite straightforward to make any changes to the production plan, which can be done up to the last minute.”
Paul Den Haese, owner of Sofel
Clear-cut overview of the plan
Paul is very happy about the decision to work with NETRONIC and thinks that other companies in a similar environment can also benefit from working with their products. He would “very, very likely“ recommend NETRONIC:
“If you need something that works well, does what you want it to do, gives you a good overview of what you are doing, don’t hesitate. You will be surprised of the impact on your organization.”
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