Interview with Massimo Lingilio, Head of Planning and Procurement at Friul Intagli, about the company’s growth path supported by the use of an APS tool. The company active in the furniture sector and based in Prata di Pordenone has always invested in tools to support the work of operators and precisely for this purpose it implemented the CyberPlan solution over fifteen years ago, adapting it over time to new needs and changed production scenarios.
Friul Intagli: historically innovative in the furniture sector
Friul Intagli is a company specialised in the production of products for the furniture sector. Founded in 1968 by Mr. Inaco Maccan, it has evolved over time and has expanded its offer both in terms of product range, production structure and market. Today it produces furniture in kits for large retailers and components for the furniture sector. Its constant growth comes from the strong propensity for technological innovation, the value recognized to its people and the continuous commitment in the social and environmental field. For the founder, the secret of success lies in the continuous, open and constant dialogue between human resources and technology. This guarantees an effective and continuously improving production process.
Fifteen years of innovative planning
The company’s evolution has led Friul Intagli to also innovate processes and at the same time reorganise a whole series of activities that have become cross-functional from departmental. These also included the planning of the production department, initially managed through tools created internally to the organization including Access and Excel files. The project involved the implementation of the CyberPlan APS suite to manage the production planning and scheduling processes, the analysis of medium and long-term loads, the generation of the production plan, the procurement of materials and the commercial part for availability with respect to the plan. CyberPlan was thus the discriminating element of an evolution born over fifteen years ago and which had a dual function, bringing benefits both from a process and organisational point of view.
The innovation project of the planning tools began in 2007 and, during the business evolutions, CyberPlan has been adapted in order to copy the new scenarios and meet the changed needs of Friul Intagli, thanks to the factility with which the tool can be adapted to the specific reality. In the last fifteen years there have also been changes from an organizational point of view, including the replacement of management software. These moments represented the occasion for further process developments, for example for the implementation of specific and vertical software.
“To keep up with market demand, it was also necessary to evolve from an organisational point of view and the tools supported us in testing different solutions that we may not have initially known about.” Massimo Lingilio
One of them was the MRP and its implementation, which in a first phase led Friul Intagli to work on a contract. Thanks to the improvement of data management within the organization, this concept has been adapted and evolved over the years to be extended to a broader logic, that of full make to stock.
“If you were to take a photograph of who we were and another of who we are today you would see that there has been a sea change. We made the production plans with Excel files where the data of the management system was transcribed, today we make them with CyberPlan. I would say that evolution was really very important.”Massimo Lingilio
Attention to data management in Friul Intagli
The inclusion of the new ERP and APS tools has also led to a change in orientation from the production process to data management and the relative need to have more timely information. The production part thus came into contact with finance and management control. The evolution has therefore led to work also on the organisational side and on the quality of the information that comes from the production department and which is the fundamental point to then manage the demand and production plan in an appropriate manner.
These developments have allowed Friul Intagli to equip itself with a unique database on which to compare itself, eliminating the complexity deriving from consulting numerous heterogeneous Excel files, not shared and often not aligned as the result of the work of different people. In addition, they have allowed the organisation to highlight the importance of data quality and trends, especially in the medium and long term, in terms of demand variation.
Sales and Operations Planning to manage medium and long-term planning
Friul Intagli then decided to extend the planning horizon to the medium and long term, so in 2018 the Sales and Operations Planning module was also included to structure the medium and long term load analysis.
CyberPlan today represents a single database and a single platform on which to pour all the demand plans; it has allowed Friul Intagli to manage both the demand and supply planning part and therefore both what concerns the commercial function and purchases. In this way, both the future evolution in terms of the market and the interactions between the production plants are managed with a single tool, also simplifying communication between them, compared to the past.
Today Friul Intagli manages, with a single tool, to control the plan and have evidence in case of advances or delays to watch the appointments in a synchronized way.
Benefits
The project that has the implementation and constant adaptation of CyberPlan has brought many benefits in Friul Intagli, to different departments and functions. In all this, the flexibility of the tool, recognized as superior to other tools, has made it possible to develop certain functions and achieve specific objectives without losing anything previously done or without interruptions to the planning process, therefore always using the same database.
With regard to the procurement phase, the information derived from CyberPlan allows effective dialogue with suppliers on issues such as compliance with market demands and quality of service.
The generation of the demand plan, on the other hand, is based on forecasts (or forecasts) generated on a weekly basis by the sales department and related to the order book.
“I like the versatility of the tool, in the sense that it allows you to perform data queries in a very versatile way, something that other tools do not always achieve” Massimo Lingilio
A further indicator of the positive effects of the project is the volume of material adjustments that in the past was very high while today these activities are more limited and managed in a short time.
The considerable changes that have taken place in the last two years within the market in which Friul Intagli operates have changed the way in which information is managed within companies. The advanced production planning and scheduling suite now allows the company to better communicate with its suppliers and customers, managing complexity and maintaining a certain agility despite the great growth.