VILPE Oy, formerly SK Tuote Oy, develops and manufactures roofing supplies for the needs of modern building. The company was founded in 1975, when the founders invented a unique “mushroom fastener” for attaching insulation to flat roofs. More than four decades of customer-oriented and innovative product development has produced a wide selection of top-notch products for various building and roofing needs. The company has more than 30 patented solutions, their operations have quality and environmental certifications, and they employ 115 people. The company’s manufacturing and product development takes place in Finland and there are subsidiaries in Russia, Poland, the Ukraine, Sweden and the Baltics.
The company was looking for a solution for improving the availability of the end product stock. Before beginning the LeanwareSCM project, the sales department had a problem with the end product stock having the wrong products. So at the beginning, stock value was high, but availability was poor. Predictability of sales and fluctuating demand were challenges for production planning. Additionally, the defining of control values for thousands of items was laborious. Production wanted a solution with which to manage production better, raise availability and automate calculations.
“Delivery times have shortened significantly.”
Niko Sarapää, Production and Product Development Project Engineer, Vilpe Oy
The company chose LeanwareSCM solution in the spring of 2013. LeanwareSCM was the ideal solution for planning product choices and batch sizes, warehouse management and item management. Vilpe wanted a solution that was easy to use and would produce clear facts, based on which availability and warehouse values could be corrected.
LeanwareSCM finds the information directly from the ERP of Vilpe and calculates item-specific control values, which production and purchasing then use in planning. It automates routine calculations for the company’s thousands of items and frees up time this way. At the same time, the solution offers an easy-to-use desktop for monitoring key figures and an easy way of creating additional reports to support decision making.
Vilpe’s delivery reliability from the warehouse to their customers has risen from the already good 97.5% to almost a full 100%. The solution has improved the delivery reliability of the entire chain, from raw materials to end products. Automatic calculations of thousands of end products, the intermediate stock and purchasing items make daily production planning and making of purchasing orders easier.
Using LeanwareSCM, the stock structure has been corrected, so that the share of high-turnover products has increased significantly. Equally, the share of low-turnover products has decreased. LeanwareSCM helps production planning in making product choices and defining batch sizes so that the products are manufactured in accordance with turnover.
In production planning, the predictability of product turnover has improved. The defining of control values for thousands of items has also been automated. Now, using LeanwareSCM, stock value and structure values can be managed continually.
LeanwareSCM has been a great help in managing product lifespans, making control method changes and drawing up lists of outgoing products. Through the implementation of LeanwareSCM, production, sales and purchases are in better dialogue with one another, and reports to support the decisions of the different departments are easy to create. For example, the supplier delivery reliability to the warehouse has improved by 38%.
As the fluctuating, seasonal demand for products is now more easily managed by Vilpe, production and operations can be developed further. LeanwareSCM has unified its operations. According to Vilpe’s Production Engineer, Niko Sarapää, LeanwareSCM has created new opportunities.
“LeanwareSCM has increased awareness of the products’ lifespan around the entire organization. LeanwareSCM has been a concrete help in managing product lifespan. It easily provides delivery numbers and turnover and has made creating lists of outgoing products and defining control methods easy. It has been important in all phases that we have been able to use Leanware’s expertise in developing the process,” says Sarapää.
“Customer’s delivery time demands have become significantly tougher over the last few years. LeanwareSCM has helped in enabling this also. I dare not even think about what the situation would be today using the old methods and stock structure.”
Niko Sarapää, Production and Product Development Project Engineer, Vilpe Oy
The solution was delivered to Vilpe in the spring of 2013. The solution was first implemented in production and then in purchasing during the second phase. The delivery was completed in a few months, and LeanwareSCM was in full use by the end of summer 2013.
“LeanwareSCM’s implementation went smoothly. Leanware’s project manager answered my questions right away and he had a lot of expertise. There was no need for separate user training as the program is simple to use. The entire implementation took a couple of months,” says Sarapää.
“During the first phase, I was learning during the project and implementation, and after that I guided and instructed others in the use of the program too,” continues Sarapää.
LeanwareSCM as a ready program has created a solution for Vilpe’s management needs and support has been good.
“The entire time there was a feeling of going in the right direction, and over a longer time period, facts proved that this really was the case. The stock structure improved and the share of high-turnover products increased,” says Sarapää.
“Results were visible about a year after the start of the project. LeanwareSCM has done its work in accordance with the goal. Our sales are seasonal and stock values are high, so it took some time for the issues to be corrected.”
Sarapää says about the customer support of Leanware:
“If there has been a problem, Leanware has provided information quickly about why data wasn’t moving or what the problem was. Support has been smooth and the answers have come quickly. It’s most important that issues are reacted to and there is no bureaucracy or unnecessary clarifications,” summarizes Sarapää.
