At AVK Plast A/S in Ribe, Denmark, ROB-EX is the primary tool for production planning. Previously, the southwestern Danish company, which is part of the global AVH Holding group, had only used their ERP system for planning. However, it was so difficult and cumbersome to plan with that they decided to invest in a dedicated planning tool. The choice fell on ROB-EX.
Factory Manager at AVK Plast A/S, Anne Kathrine Pedersen, explains: “Before I came to AVK Plast, I worked at another company that used ROB-EX. I didn’t work with it myself, but I knew the great value it provided for the company, so I was very interested in having it here at AVK Plast as well. Before we got ROB-EX, we planned everything in our ERP, but it was just so difficult to plan in and hopeless. So, I really wanted to find something else that was more manageable and more visual. And I knew that ROB-EX was exactly that.”
Fast and simple implementation process
For many, the thought of implementing a new IT system can be daunting, and many can share stories of such projects dragging on for months, sometimes even years. So, it might be hard to believe that a ROB-EX implementation process could take just 5 weeks, and that the digital planning system starts providing value immediately. Nevertheless, this is the reality when we activate our ROB-EX projects, with our experienced ROB-EX experts onboard. At AVK Plast A/S, it was ROB-EX specialists Anders Holberg and Allan Axelsen who led the project. Both have solid industry experience and extensive expertise in IT system implementation, business management, and change management.
“Anders has really been a great project leader, and without a doubt, he’s been excellent at explaining how everything fits together and ensuring that we understood it. It really went smoothly. We also had Allan with us at the start, and he was good as well. Both have great insights and a lot of experience with production,” Anne Kathrine says and continues: “The process was just great. We quickly realized that we had to dedicate ourselves to the hours we worked on the activation each day. The intense process meant that we learned everything quickly and could apply things immediately. In the end, it was beneficial that we worked so intensively on it, and I would prefer this approach on a larger scale because it made it much easier to stay on track and keep everyone engaged. Right now, I’m working on another IT project, and it has so far taken 1.5 years. So, there’s really a difference. Of course, there were times when it was intense because we had a lot to catch up on afterwards, but we knew this and could stay focused on it.”
Value felt on the bottom line from day one
When choosing ROB-EX to manage production, the values should be felt quickly in daily planning, and at AVK Plast A/S, many of these values came extremely fast. Anne Kathrine Pedersen explains: “We got value right away. In fact, from the moment we went live with ROB-EX, my planner and I saved 2-4 hours a day combined on planning. Before, when we needed to change a date, we had to manually go in and make all the changes, and it took a long time. It could take us hours before we saw the consequences of moving something. Now we can see that immediately, and that’s one of the low-hanging fruits you get with ROB-EX, but still such an important one. Another thing is that we have much better oversight of when our machines are done producing. Now we can see far into the future when we need to make a shift, which used to be manually monitored and a guess as to when to change over. Now we can go into ROB-EX and see that well in advance, which means we can plan these shifts in a way that minimizes downtime, and we can even distribute them more evenly. A third thing is that we can now see when we’re running low on raw materials. We could technically see this in Axapta before, but it required manual handling. That meant we frequently didn’t have the raw materials we needed, even though we should have.”
ROB-EX is the crystal ball that provides better customer service and significantly reduces downtime
“Today, we can predict so many things much earlier, and we can also see further into the future regarding when we can produce. This means we can now give customers delivery updates earlier than before and notify them in good time if an item isn’t in stock, which means the delivery has to be postponed. These values can be seen on the bottom line,” Anne Kathrine Pedersen explains and continues: “We have two production halls, and in one we have 6 machines, and in the other, we have 1 crane. We use the crane to change over. One of the big problems we had before was booking the crane, which could lead to conflicts if some people wanted to use it at the same time as others. But that problem is gone now because we can predict when we will have a shift, and therefore when the crane will be needed. We can easily rearrange everything so that all the shifts make sense and avoid conflicts. Now we can also predict when a machine will be finished, and that has really reduced the time we spend with machines not producing. For example, when we need to change colours on a machine to run a limited batch, I can now see that if we do the changeover at 1 PM, we can switch back the next day at 7 AM, meaning the machine will be down for as little time as possible. We couldn’t do that before. Now I can also see in advance when we start to run into problems with the stock of a certain component, so we can better prepare for it.”
The work has become much easier for many employees
At AVK Plast, ROB-EX is now an integral part of everyday operations. There’s no doubt that the value AVK Plast has gained from ROB-EX has made a world of difference for both employees in production and for the company’s customers and suppliers. Anne Kathrine Pedersen concludes: “Work in production has become so much easier for all employees now because ROB-EX can predict so much. We had previously set up several processes and started tasks, only to have to change them because we discovered we were missing a component, but that doesn’t happen anymore. Right now, I look a week ahead to see how many tasks we have and how they can be distributed throughout the week so that everything is balanced in terms of the number of people working. That way, things don’t get too clustered. Everything is so much easier for us now, and ROB-EX runs as an integral part of our daily work.”