SUCCESS STORY: How to increase the supply chain response rate by 30%

We bring you an exciting story from the long-term experience of a company operating in the industrial sector in the digitalization of production management.  We will talk about how to increase the supply chain response rate by 30% in the industrial sector, how to create systems that are so efficient and user-friendly that the return on investment is less than a year, and which ensures long-term partnership and successful cooperation? The experienced IT manager of the production company also brings out the keywords of successful systems, explains why it is sometimes wiser to build custom solutions and what must be taken into account when implementing and integrating different systems.

We sat down with Sven Ahtaman, the IT manager of Saku Metall, and talked about their business, Net Group’s solutions, created values, and synergies from long-term cooperation.

Net Group X Saku Metall

The cooperation between Net Group and Saku Metall started almost seven years ago when the need first arose to interface the orders of one large customer in electronic form.” Incoming orders required a huge amount of manual work on data entry, which was insanely time-consuming and inefficient use of labor and machinery.” explains Sven Ahtama, IT Manager of Saku Metall. “As the products are not ordered in stock, but are order-based and personalized sizes, accessories, modules, colors, etc., according to the customer’s wishes, the automation of such a seemingly small link to save time when placing an order is a significant and important victory,” adds Ahtama.

Next steps based on trust won

Excellent cooperation led to the following projects. The sales team also faced the challenge that much of the work is done by hand and on paper. “However, data on paper ages and updating, reprinting and distributing it is again quite time-consuming and inefficient,” adds Ahtama. Also, making last-minute changes in the customer’s interest is cumbersome, can affect final delivery times, introduce human errors, and lower overall production quality.

Net Group’s task was to digitize the entire production chain. We created a custom-made solution based on Saku Metall’s business and strategic challenges. ” Of course, there are also many ready-made ERP solutions, but it is very difficult to find functional and user-friendly software based on the company’s needs,” describes Ahtama. In addition, recoding and constantly updating the already created software and making changes is cumbersome and costly, both in terms of time and money.

Our goal was to create a solution that is as simple and accessible as possible, with direct and measurable impact and benefits in production. One of the main values of custom software created is that it is commonly understandable to the whole team, has a clear user interface, and once again speeds up the processes. For example, even in departments where people did not have to be very exposed to technology in their daily work in the past, it was no problem to explain the solution to the problem to them quickly.

100% Control of production

In production, minutes, sometimes seconds, are of paramount importance in every operation – winning even half a minute in each movement is already a big deal. The solution created by Net Group significantly increased the speed and transparency of production.“ When a customer asks in which stage the order is, it can always be found quickly and conveniently with the click of a button. At the same time, it is also possible to plan raw materials on time in-house, because as automated inventories go off the business software on time, then due to these small steps, the supply chain response speed increased by almost 30%,” says Ahtama. A significant increase in production speed and data will help to see patterns in production and better plan future production and development activities in the management as well.

Trust it to a partner offering synergy

“I personally am of the opinion that it’s always good to have the opportunity to interact personally with the people you click with, and you know that person has enough influence to make decisions and have the power to change things. You always have the confidence that you pick up the phone and talk things quickly through to find a quick solution to problems or errors. It is not easy to achieve this in large corporate companies.” says Sven Ahtama

Saku Metall’s own in-house IT department is kept rather lean. It holds in its ranks mostly key specialists who can and do know where to outsource quality service. Read Sven Ahtama’s thoughts on this topic in an article published in IT news.

Net Group’s goal is to offer new innovative and efficient complete production management solutions to improve internal efficiency, increase profits, and develop the company’s sustainability. If you also feel that this success story has spoken to you in any way, contact us at ra*******@ne******.com, and together we will help you see solutions to the challenges!