Solutions for industry: the smart factory

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Industry 4.0 and the paperless factory are definitely hot topics and buzzwords in the modern manufacturing industry. Manufacturing 2.0 is all about recognising customer requirements at an early stage. Doing this successfully allows you to adjust your internal processes to these signs and wishes. Short lines of communication with customers result in accelerated product innovations. Do you want to stay relevant in this challenging market environment and not lose sight of your competitors, who can be located all over the world today? Then integrating all of your services and business processes with your IT landscape is the way to go.

Appronto knows the manufacturing industry through and through and recognises the IT challenges modern manufacturing companies face. We work with a wide range of customers from the manufacturing industry and understand the challenges your organisation faces. Creating support for technical innovation is our core task. Subsequently, we help you prioritise your challenges one by one.

The great thing about a development method like low-code is that you add functionalities to your IT arsenal gradually and in a stepwise fashion. At Appronto, we also focus heavily on the business side of IT. This gives you the opportunity to develop solutions that are the cream of the crop in the technical field and also allows you to really meet the practical wants and needs of your business and customers. Your “regular” factory turns into a smart factory.

What is a smart factory?

A smart factory allows you to quickly respond to (changing) customer and market demands. The creation of a smart factory requires manufacturing companies that work together and systems that integrate flawlessly with those of your suppliers. The smart factory also needs a reliable production process that combines quality with minimal waste. It also relies on a strong focus on service. It is up to you to make the right decisions. IT offers you a multitude of possibilities when it comes to approaching customers personally, delivering products at lightning speed and innovating products and services. But which of these options specifically apply to you?

Pillars of success

Is your factory designed for today’s trends and requirements? A smart factory gives you insight into:

  • Production costs, waste and the best ways to minimise both;
  • The level of transparency throughout the entire production and supply chain;
  • The available options to guarantee efficiency and speed;
  • The demand for customisation and personalisation. “Batch-of-one” manufacturing is a good example of this;
  • The integration with adjacent systems.

Weener Plastics

Weener Plastics is a renowned, globally operating manufacturer of injection-molded plastic packaging. For this company, Appronto has developed an application that relieves employees of things that used to cost a lot of time and manpower. Think of preparing adjustment overviews or making a transport request. An important step on the road to process optimization! In addition, we have trained our own IT team within the company that is able to build innovative applications ourselves. The ultimate goal: to create an innovation factory that will deliver even more smart systems in the near future.

Ron Marree, Global Head of Operations: “As a basis for the deployment of Mendix, we have chosen as a company to think carefully about best practices within our organization and then support them with an application developed in Mendix. The built-in system of short, efficient sprints, writing user stories and the great involvement of all involved contribute enormously to the success. ”

De slimme fabriek van Weener Plastics

Recently the TMS (Transport Management System) application for Weener Plastics went live and taken into use. The Mendix app automates the logistics processes surrounding the transport and the planning, administration and financial processing thereof.

Tony’s Chocolonely

Appronto has integrated the entire primary IT landscape of the well-known chocolate brand Tony’s Chocolonely. The integration layer allowed us to link the following adjacent systems: Dynamics 365 Business Central, Salesforce, the webshop, point-of-sales systems, the ingredients system and various systems of logistics partners. The project has created enormous flexibility and laid the groundwork for a further expansion of the current and already impressive growth curve.

You can imagine that coordinating various software systems is an enormous challenge for a company like Tony’s Chocolonely, which has experienced a strong growth spurt within a short period of time. For example, the company has nine different private limited companies with associated, separate accounts. In addition to the central ERP system and Dynamics 365 Business Central (formerly Microsoft Dynamics NAV), the company works with various systems that all exchange data with each other. Due to the explosive growth in the number of databases, interfaces and applications, a complex set of applications had eventually emerged.

The solution called iPaaS

Boomi’s integration platform allows us to map your complex IT landscape and ensures that your data management is orchestrated in one central environment. iPaaS is purpose-built to help companies cope with the integration demands of today’s business environment, future-proof their integration solutions and increase the value of IT investments.

Do you want to get started with a smart factory, just like Weener Plastics and Tony’s Chocolonely?

Appronto is happy to think along with you without obligation!

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