Supply Chain Management customer booklet - IFS

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IFS APPLICATIONS
supply chain
management
agile solutions in action

profi m 5
jotun 7
sits 9
roxtec 11
gables 13
cozzini 15
amphenol alden products
debut services 19
17

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A CHANGE OF HEART
A supply chain has been described as the artery of a business.
The pathway that enables goods, raw materials—even services—to
flow freely throughout an organization. And, like any artery, for the
supply chain to operate at maximum efficiency it needs a strong and
reliable heart.
The following short stories have been collected to provide you with
a brief overview as to what happens when a customer has a ‘change of
heart’ and lets IFS provide the beat for its business.

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Sitting pretty
There is a point when legacy solutions become more trouble than they are
worth. And it is at that precise moment that a company has to face a very
harsh reality. It is time to invest in a completely new solution. So it was with
PROFI m , a leading Polish furniture manufacturer. As the company produces
an average of 70,000 chairs and armchairs per month, mostly in make-toorder
mode with very short series, accurate calculation of material quantities
and lead times for delivery is a business-critical issue. And being able to
produce accurate cost analyses and production forecasting is imperative to
the business if the company is to continue to reduce costs and maintain
reliable customer delivery dates. After careful consideration, PROFI m selected
IFS Applications because, in addition to providing a rich range of relevant
business functionality, it provides PROFI m with excellent total cost of
ownership.
PROFI m
manufacturer of to-order office chairs

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THE ART OF PAINT
Faced with a very demanding ‘must have’ list, the ERP vendors invited to
pitch for Jotun’s business knew immediately that the winner would have to be
very special indeed. Of course, as one of the world’s major paints, coatings
and powder coating manufacturers, Jotun is no stranger to meeting stringent
demands itself, and its high level of expectation seemed perfectly natural.
To IFS it was the kind of challenge it thrives on. And it was this dynamic
and energetic culture which convinced Jotun’s management team that IFS
would make the most suitable partner. Of course the fact that IFS has the
capacity to provide a global solution with proven technology that offers the
easiest and most intuitive solution both to learn and use played its part in
the decision-making process, too.
jotun
Manufacturer of paint and coatings

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ARE YOU SITTING COMFORTABLY?
Success brings its own rewards and occasionally its own problems, too.
Such was the case when SITS, a highly reputable Swedish–Polish furniture
manufacturer, experienced a strong sustained burst of growth. Suddenly the
company had outgrown its existing supply chain solution and was in need of
a new solution with capability to handle 4,500 individual products weekly.
Enter IFS. During the tender process IFS put forward a solution with a depth
of functionality that ensured total order accuracy and that can be perfectly
configured to handle the strict demands of SITS’ business. The clincher was
the amount of industry experience and competence that IFS consultants
brought to the project. After meeting, the SITS team chose IFS, and plans
were made for implementation of the new solution. Today SITS’ business
continues to flourish—as does the relationship between SITS and IFS.
sits
Designer and manufacturer of home furniture

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MIRROR, MIRROR ON THE WALL
In business it can pay to look inward. To see where your business processes
can be improved and where you can streamline your offering to match
changes in the marketplace. As a successful manufacturer of sealing solutions,
Roxtec’s customer base stretches across many different industries, ranging
from telecom to energy distribution, and many different locations. To help
maintain its strong growth curve, Roxtec decided it was time to upgrade its
IT solution and launch a new global distribution process. Working closely
with IFS consultants Roxtec’s development team was able to draw on IFS’
huge industry experience to formulate an upgrade program that would enable
the company to revise its existing business processes and launch a new
world-class global distribution service.
Roxtec
manufacturer of sealing solutions

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TAKING THE GUESS WORK OUT OF
FORECASTING
In 1946 Gables Engineering Inc. began making control panels in a small
storefront in Florida. Since those early days, Gables has grown into the
industry leader in custom avionics controls and other related products, and
is noted for its forward-looking approach. This approach—and an existing
unreliable MRP solution—led Gables to rethink its IT set-up. Gables
approached a number of vendors with a well-defined list of functionality
requirements which included an MRP module, the capability to cover a
minimum of 23-character fields for parts numbers, inventory control, and
forecasting functions. Gables selected the IFS Applications ebusiness
solution, which included a true MRP component that gave Gables a better
grasp of actual demand. Before IFS, demand was determined by customer
orders as well as by a factor for historical demand. This caused Gables to buy
and build unnecessary parts, which would load the shops with unnecessary
work and inflate purchased inventories. Now Gables employees can calculate
demand using actual customer orders, and order and build parts by looking at
forecasts, reducing work in progress by 50% and overall inventories by 30%.
gables
Avionics engineering

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CUTTING PROBLEMS DOWN TO SIZE
Over the years, Cozzini Inc., a highly regarded manufacturer of industrial
food preparation equipment and knife sharpening equipment, had slowly
been transformed from being only a manufacturing company to also being
a service company. Cozzini was living with information silos, with
information on various spreadsheets. This made it difficult to finds things
such as bills of materials (BOMs), orders, and customer spare parts. It was
also difficult to access the information needed for accounting and engineering
processes. This frustration led to the decision to invest in a new ERP solution.
Out of the contending vendors it was IFS’ offering that caught Cozzini’s eye.
The application was scalable and agile, and was the perfect fit to support the
company’s planned global growth strategy. In short, it completely matched
Cozzini’s business requirements and provided the support that Cozzini
expected. IFS Applications has made the company’s entire business processes
far more visible, which in turn has increased efficiency levels and streamlined
operations.
cozzini
Manufacturer of food preparation equipment

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REFRESHING THE PARTS OTHER SYSTEMS
CANNOT REACH
Having an efficient and true materials planning requirement (MRP) system is
absolutely vital when you are running a business that involves keeping track
of hundreds of parts. So when Amphenol Alden Products Co., designers
and manufacturers of connectors and cable assemblies used in medical and
industrial applications, discovered that its existing MRP system was failing,
it decided it was time for change. Amphenol studied the vendor market to
see which company could provide a solution that would offer the benefits of
a true MRP system and help it comply with the complex FDA regulations.
Amphenol made its decision on which vendor gave the greatest bang for
their buck and replaced its existing ERP solution with IFS Applications.
Amphenol installed IFS components for manufacturing, human resources,
quality management, configure-to-order, financials, project management,
product design management and sales force automation. Since then, Amphenol
has increased throughput, reduced order backlog, and cut inventory by 30%.
AMPHENOL ALDEN PRODUCTS
Designer and manufacturer of cables and connectors

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VISIBILITY IS A REAL EYE-OPENER
To run any sort of business successfully you have to have a clear view of
what is going on. And that doesn’t mean just in certain areas. U.K.-based
Debut Services Limited, a joint venture between Babcock International
Group and Bovis Lend Lease, is Defence Estates’ Regional Prime Contractor
in the South West. Debut provides a range of estate management services,
incorporating facilities management and a framework arrangement for the
design and construction of new projects across the estate, and needed a
solution that would keep it on the ball. Debut required an IT system that
would provide the support that enables the coordination and active management
of the supply chain to ensure that customer time scales are always met.
The answer came in the shape of IFS Applications, which has been purposely
designed to help service-based organizations with processes such as call
management, resource planning, logistics and service analysis. Debut
continues to attract new customers by using its new IFS solution to broaden
and improve the services it provides.
DEBUT SERVICES
Estate management

ABOUT IFS
IFS is a public company (OMX STO: IFS) founded in 1983 that develops, supplies,
and implements IFS Applications , a component-based extended ERP suite built on
SOA technology. IFS focuses on agile businesses where any of four core processes
are strategic: service & asset management, manufacturing, supply chain and
projects.The company has more than 2,000 customers and is representedin
some 60 countries with 2,800 employees in total.
If you are interested in further information, e-mail info@ifsworld.com or contact one
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En4706-1 Production: IFS Corporate Marketing, April 2013. Printing: DanagårdLiTHO, Ödeshög, Sweden.