Established in 1994, FINIDR printing house is one of the largest producers of hardback and paperback books in Europe, employing 500 people, printing 24 million books per year, and delivering them to 45 countries globally.
Running the business requires a wide range of business processes—from sales and pre-planning, all the way to production, manufacturing, and shipping. FINIDR’s Book production is purely make-to-order (MTO) manufacturing—production commences only once a customer sends in an order. FINIDR doesn’t print any make-to-stock (MTS) books. Instead, customers select all product parameters, such as the number of books, size, shape, color, material, non-standard accessories, and more.
“Infor SyteLine enables us to face our current industry challenges, especially in terms of more demanding customers for flexibility, quality, and delivery.”
– Witold Palowski, Director of Production and Administration, FINIDR
The Problems
- Support an MTO manufacturing process that includes up to 400 individual product configuration parameters
- Upgrade from a slow, error-prone, manual, order-entry processes
- Execute a greater number of orders, while supporting smaller manufacturing batches
The Results
- Accurately predict order delivery time
- Support limited production run capacities while still maintaining profitability
- Reduce the frequency of production delays
Every customer order is unique—often with special requirements. As a result, one of FINDIR’s biggest challenges was being able to provide up to 400 possible parameters when planning an order. This puts tremendous pressure on FINIDR to meet all these demands and still be competitive with quality, price, and speed.
And FINIDR must content with this while also adjusting to a market trend toward smaller manufacturing batches. The company’s present average production series of 2,500 copies has shrunk considerably from around 10,000 printed books just a few years ago. While fewer books are being printed per batch, FINIDR has experienced a significant increase in the number of orders. More printing in smaller batches means production machines need to be set up more frequently in unique configurations that then need to be quickly reset to entirely new and different configurations for subsequent batches— sometimes several times a day. A greater number of orders also increases the complexity of preproduction and shipping processes, as well as putting greater pressure on the supply chain to ensure the high availability of printing material.
Improve Planning Precision & Production Throughput
Prior to implementing Infor SyteLine, FINIDR used a registration system that was developed in-house that managed 30 to 40 orders per month. That gradually increased to nearly 1,000 customer orders per month—and most of them with far more production parameters than in the past. There came a point when FINIDR realized that its in-house system was inadequate for planning the sheer number of manufacturing orders, each with so many different parameters from one another. The company then launched a search for a robust ERP system with manufacturing planning functionality.
“More effective bid management allows us to expand our ability to process more orders and increase the total productivity.”
– Witold Palowski, Director of Production and Administration, FINIDR
After narrowing down the search to three candidates, FINIDR selected Infor Syteline/CloudSuite Industrial (CSI) because of its flexibility in being able to adapt to the company’s specific manufacturing needs. Once deployed, SyteLine allowed FINIDR to fully support its complex business processes, including production, logistics, data management, order registration, and advanced planning and scheduling (APS). The system is currently used by 75 users in the company.
APS capabilities allowed FINIDR to predict order delivery time more precisely, enhance the registration process, and experience delays with fewer than 1% of all orders. SyteLine’s ability to plan for limited capacities enabled the company’s planners to find an optimal balance between customer requirements priority and production optimization priority. With SyteLine, FINIDR was able to increase production throughput with the same workforce, as well as support a higher number of orders. SyteLine helped FINIDR to increase its competitive edge and strengthen its market position.
Speed Up Order Configuration & Accuracy
To help keep pace with a growing number of production parameters, FINIDR extended the Infor system with Infor’s configuration management solution, Infor CPQ. With the previous, manual order-entry process, incorrectly recorded parameters or collisions between incompatible parameters could result in the inability to execute an order. With order configuration management now a higher priority—along with FINIDR’s push to also improve customer service—time consuming, manually executed configuration was no longer a viable option.
Not only does Infor CPQ give FINIDR the power to support an unlimited number of parameters, the software also quickly and automatically identifies problematic or impracticable variants. Infor CPQ also allows FINIDR to calculate optimal prices for customer, while still ensuring profitability for the company. Relying on Infor CPQ means that FINIDR can expect fewer order errors, see an acceleration in production performance, support more precise pricing, speed up bid management, and even better support change management for orders in progress.
Keep Up with Major Market Changes
Infor SyteLine and Infor CPQ allowed FINIDR to adjust to demand for smaller, more frequent, and more complex production processes. Despite significant market changes, FINIDR has successfully maintained its position as a leading printing company in Central Europe due to its ability to significantly increase productivity, decrease errors, and vastly improve the order process.