Pomina Flat Steel, a subsidiary of Pomina Steel Corporation, was founded in 2018 and is already one of the most well-known construction steel manufacturers in Vietnam. With 400 employees and an annual production capacity of 600,000 tons, the company makes cold corrugated iron roofing used in residential and commercial construction. Since its founding, the management team at Pomina Flat Steel has wanted to implement an ERP solution to optimize the company’s operations and manufacturing processes, knowing that an end-to-end robust solution would be key to top-notch productivity.
“Since we are operating in a niche industry, it is highly critical that we can handle the maintenance issues, and Infor SyteLine solves the needs and offers us satisfying explications. That is what made us choose Infor SyteLine.”
– Do Dieu Huyen, Deputy General Director, Pomina Flat Steel
The Challenges
- The business was unable to gain complete visibility into its procurement process and full awareness of the quantities sold at each point of sale.
- The company needed an ERP system that could help solve plant maintenance issues.
- High expectations were set both internally and externally for a purpose-built, user-friendly solution.
The Results
- With Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) module, customer sales can be more accurately forecast so the company can be well prepared.
- SyteLine helps project needs for inventory and raw materials, and calculates overhead costs, margins, and profitability.
- Through improvements in usability, ease of navigation, and report generation, users are empowered to be highly engaged and agile.
Pomina Flat Steel Strives to Deliver the Highest Quality Products
Pomina Flat Steel underwent a standard selection process to find the most suitable ERP provider to join them on their journey to modernization. The leadership team knew the right ERP solution could deliver immense benefits, including minimized costs, optimized resources, and reduced risks. After six months of research and discussions with potential vendors, the project team selected Infor Syteline/CloudSuite Industrial (CSI) to solve the company’s current challenges.
Directly involved in the implementation process and being an ERP user for years, Do Dieu Huyen, Deputy General Director, Pomina Flat Steel, has extensive experience in the use of ERP solutions in manufacturing. However, while Pomina Flat Steel does have practices that align with the industry standards, the company still has its own unique qualities, particularly the production and cost allocation processes.
This distinct need posed hurdles during the software selection phase. Pomina Flat Steel asked each vendor to propose a suitable solution for this and other complexities, like the multiple stages in maintenance, material input and output, and inventory control, among others. Dieu Huyen stated, “Based on our previous experience, we gave our software providers clear, detailed, and complete requirements. From there, we examined how they solved the puzzle.”
Explaining the reasons for choosing SyteLine, Dieu Huyen emphasized the architecture and tightly integrated suite with industry-specific modules, each serving a clear purpose.
These contribute towards how the solution meets three critical requirements for Pomina Flat Steel:
1. Sales order and purchase order controls—Since its successful implementation, Pomina Flat Steel has witnessed growth in various aspects, with procurement and sales showing the most transformation. With the solution in place, business users can now gain complete visibility into the procurement process, understand the exact amount that needs to be purchased, lower the risk of duplicating purchase orders, and closely monitor the progress of all orders. When it comes to sales, users are fully aware of the quantities being sold at each point of sale without having to wait for traditional report updates, a process that is both labor-intensive and error prone.
In this new process, all requests go through the Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) module, which allows users to calculate the actual demands needed after deducting the inventory and aggregated parts. This reduces risk of impulse buying that can come from the lack of visibility into the actual, real-time inventory level.
SyteLine helps streamline the process from purchase order to import, letting the company closely monitor and optimize inventory levels while minimizing labor required to mitigate the issues.
2. Advanced maintenance—Admittedly, many of the potential providers have solutions with some comparable capabilities. SyteLine has several that stand out and differentiate it from other ERP solutions. One of the features which stood out to the project team was its advanced maintenance module. “Since we are operating in a niche industry, it is highly critical that we can handle the maintenance issues, and Infor SyteLine solves the needs and offers us satisfying explications,” said Dieu Huyen.
3. Level of user-friendliness—The teams at Pomina Flat Steel had previous ERP experience, giving them a clear picture of the needs and challenges ahead of them. They had high expectations for a purpose-built, user-friendly solution, and a desire for a highly flexible solution with a user interface that would support the workforce throughout the organization. Dieu Huyen noted SyteLine’s “usability, ease of navigation, and report generation, thus empowering us, the users, to be more agile.”
With Infor SyteLine, users can make quick, well-informed decisions while staying proactive in managing inventory costs and other costs associated with purchasing, maintenance, and more.
Reporting Impressive Results
The company has expressed confidence in its technology partnership decision. After one year of operating, the results gained from implementing SyteLine are exactly what Pomina envisioned.
Not only has the company enjoyed a savings of 10–20% in workforce costs, but also has achieved greater visibility, accuracy, and timeliness, enabling the business to become increasingly efficient and error-free.
“Infor SyteLine was ranked highly in terms of usability, ease of navigation, and report generation, thus empowering us, the users, to be more agile.”
– Do Dieu Huyen, Deputy General Director, Pomina Flat Steel