The history of Spojené kartáčovny a.s., a manufacturer of SPOKAR® products, dates back to 1882. Today, they are one of the leading manufacturers of brush products in Central and Eastern Europe and their products are sold in more than 25 countries. The company currently manufactures over 600 product types and has an annual production volume of over 900 million euros. The company's production capacity is over 900 different types of brushes.
The company supplies goods to a wide range of customers, from multinational chains to wholesale distributors to retail units in the Czech Republic and abroad. Spojené kartáčovny first chose IFS Applications as their ERP system in 2010 and last year decided to upgrade their existing solution.
THE FIRST IMPLEMENTATION
In 2009, Spojené kartáčovny decided to undertake a major upgrade and cross-platform integration of its IT facilities. The systems for accounting, production management, logistics and marketing were to be replaced by one robust solution. IFS Applications won the tender and the implementation started in March 2010 with a planned go-live on 1 November 2010.
A key priority for the implementation was to streamline production processes and make them more efficient. The company expectations were that the new IT system would introduce a core set of corporate standards and ensure smooth integration with other company processes, namely financial management, accounting and human resources management. It was essential to significantly improve the efficiency of inter-company communication and increase labour productivity whilst eliminating errors, which were usually associated with multiple costs. The benefits targeted were better control of costs, meaning growing revenues and their evolution over time, the delivery of substantive outputs and the provision of information for analysis.
IMPLEMENTATION PITFALLS
The challenges faced by the implementation stemmed mainly from delays in the solution deadlines and SPOKAR’s concerns about transferring from their old legacy system. This eventually led to a postponement of the go-live phase to 1 December 2010. However, this was ultimately viewed rather positively, as not a single fault was recorded during the go-live launch that would have significantly limited the functioning of the system.
MAIN BENEFITS
SPOKAR particularly appreciated the intuitive user interface of the IFS Enterprise Explorer, which allowed access to the full functionality of the system from any location with an internet connection, and also made it easy to navigate the entire system, as it handled searches in a similar way to, for example, Google or Seznam. The unification of the company’s information resources and the ability to create simple analyses using quick reports and Business Analytics was also a significant step forward from the old system. End users welcomed the simplification of financial management, accounting and invoice liquidation procedures.
The introduction of IFS Applications significantly accelerated the process of sales and purchase orders and brought clarity and unification of work with common customer price lists. In the area of planning the availability of stock items, an overview of future production needs for semi-finished and finished products had been improved. In general, this had led to better communication between sales and production and, as a result, faster production, order creation and delivery to the end client.
“The implementation of an ERP system is a significant intervention in the functioning of any company. I have to say that despite all the pitfalls, the implementation of the IFS software in our company has been very successful and I believe that in IFS we gained a partner for the long-term development of Spojené kartáčovny,” says Ing. Pavel Koutenský, Chief Economic Officer.
UPGRADE SOLUTIONS
Last year (2021), SPOKAR decided to upgrade and modernize its information system by deploying IFS Applications 10, which is one of the top ERP systems and is able to provide support for further development of any company.
“Since we had been working with InfoConsulting for a long time, we were very confident that they could offer us the best knowledge and solutions to help us optimize and significantly expand our use of manufacturing planning within our company. We also expected from IFS Applications 10 an increase in support for business activities linked to the prediction of future sales,” says Mr. Jiří Zbrojka, owner and CEO of Spojené kartáčovny.
The upgraded version 10 went live 8 months after the start of the project. In addition to the previously used functionality from the areas of financial, purchasing and warehouse management, it brought extended support in dispatching activities, automation in warehouses by using the integrated WADACO system, extended planning from forecasting customer demand to supporting business processes and working with customers.
In addition to the development and extension of the planning interdependence from the beginning of the business cycle, through the actual production to distribution and dispatch, a strong emphasis is placed on maintenance in the deployment of the new version. This now includes predictive maintenance of moulds, which are key to the company in terms of efficient use of this costly production tool. Monitoring their wear and tear will help increase production efficiency by reducing breakdowns and downtime of key production equipment.
Thus, IFS Applications currently supports all areas of the company’s activities – from manufacturing to supply chain management, maintenance and service to CRM, finance, business intelligence and human resources.
BENEFITS OF THE SOLUTION:
- Production optimization using advanced planning.
- Increased support of business activities, introduction of sales representative support including access to necessary data on mobile devices.
- Maintenance management, especially predicting optimization and timeliness of mold maintenance as an area of asset management.
- Advanced IFS WADACO application, especially in logistics activities.
- Connection of logistics operations in warehouses between IFS and Jungheinrich.
- Production transfer via inter-company warehouse terminals.
Ready to get started? Contact us!
Contact us at the office nearest to you or submit a business inquiry online.