NetSuite OneWorld Manufacturing: efficient management of inventory for LAM Industries S.r.l.

The client

LAM Industries S.r.l. positions itself as a leading modern and technically advanced company operating in the construction and sale of boilers, water storage tanks, combined storage tanks and heat pumps. It also produces thermal insulation systems and is introducing environmentally friendly products alongside those produced using standard materials. Currently LAM Industries facilities employ 70 workers cover an area of 32,000 sq.m., half of which is used for production activities.

In the boiler market there is an increasing need for costs to be contained on an ongoing basis and the range of the different models available to be increased. These two requirements necessitate high levels of operational flexibility in the management of the variable distribution patterns over the course of the year, and in the design and manufacturing of non-standard products.

In order to optimise organisational, managerial and technological investments across all business areas, LAM Industries S.r.l. needed to introduce an ERP system that could be fully integrated with the company’s business flows, facilitating communication between all business functions.

Client requirements

LAM Industries wanted to adopt, quickly and while controlling budgets, an ERP system that would facilitate the computerisation of all business processes while offering features such as: a centralised architecture accessible both from corporate offices as well as in a mobile context, with the ability to customise flows and business intelligence based on business-related and monitoring needs.

The main criteria to be fulfilled were:

• No infrastructure costs or costs related to on-site technological installations
• Rapid configuration at the company headquarters in Italy and possible roll-out for the subsidiaries in other countries;
• Coverage of the demand planning and production planning functionalities;
• Guaranteed flexibility both in terms of performance, in order to accommodate the growth in business volumes, and customisation so as to be able to adapt to LAM Industries S.r.l.’ future business changes.

With its Agile methodological approach, Air Reply shared LAM Industries S.r.l.’s vision for the system design in order to achieve the company’s objectives. This involved dismantling technological silos and safeguarding daily activities while guaranteeing business continuity even during the migration process. The constant alignment between Reply and the client facilitated an immediate, step-by-step sharing of the results, allowing the customer to focus on the project objectives in full compliance with the project timeframes.

Benefits for the client

The creation of an Agile information system, based on the NetSuite One World Manufacturing solution has made it possible to reduce the level of expenditure on IT in just seven months, providing a comprehensive and effective solution able to support the company both with existing processes and in its future organisational and business development.ha permesso in soli sette mesi di ridurre gli investimenti IT fornendo una soluzione completa e efficace in grado di supportare l’azienda sia in tutti i processi già attivi, sia nella sua futura evoluzione organizzativa e di business.

The ability to access data, constantly updated and consolidated via a single system, has increased the company’s ability to manage critical areas such as inventory, outsourcing and production planning.

Solution

Following a careful analysis of the management solution, LAM Industries S.r.l. entrusted Air Reply with the development of an ERP cloud solution based on NetSuite and focused on the manufacturing vertical. Its choice was motivated by:

• the high technological content of the application
• the availability of the Air Reply operating bundle for manufacturing companies
• a speed of implementation guaranteed by Reply’s experience
• the possibility of adapting the configuration of the system to grow or change in line with the company’s business

The comprehensiveness of the operational functionalities and the real-time visibility of all information across all business areas has allowed the company to carry out a rapid implementation. This has facilitated the revision of various processes, eliminating a number of external applications and thereby ensuring that data is unambiguous and that strategic decisions can made quickly.

To ensure an optimal design process, Air Reply put in place an efficient teamworking system that played a key role in the creation and roll-out of the NetSuite solution.

The central features that ensured the success of the project can be summarised as:

• a sharing, right from the early stages of the project, of the set-up plans with company managers, who then became promoters of the choices made;
• involvement of users from the very early stages of the project so that the system and business processes could be created with the users’ active input, thereby ensuring that the system could be adapted to their changing needs over time;
• speedy development of the procedures and specific reporting system used for carrying out critical business processes;
• a rapid adaptation of Air Reply’s solution for manufacturing companies;
• on-site coaching of users during the early "go live" stages in order to facilitate all critical operations;
• continuing development of the NetSuite system in a proactive manner with actions focused on helping the client in its own business operations.