German-based Völkl Sports creates an array of sports-related paraphernalia and equipment. Within its manufacturing facilities, the company develops around 500,000 pair of skies, 30,000 snowboards and 120,000 tennis rackets annually, which are then distributed to nearly 50 countries all over the globe.
With over 1,000 geographically separated employees, the organization quickly realized that it was in need of a highly robust and efficient platform that included the capabilities needed to successfully power and manage all processes in production such as production order planning, breakdown of parts lists, determination and purchasing of parts required, feedback from production, and project status.
Its outdated system first implemented in 1995 simply didn’t have the flexibility and scalability that it required to continue to evolve with the business.
With the goal of streamlining all vital business operations, which could then be combined into one seamlessly integrated project, the sports company ultimately turned to Engineer to Order provider IFS, giving workers access to a system “which is proof against the future and open for modifications. The integration of the individual IFS Applications components minimizes the input effort and creates a high level of transparency within the enterprise,” a recent case study revealed. “By integrating all necessary business processes from development to dispatch electronically in IFS Applications, the information flow between production site and sales organization at Völkl could be optimized. The persons in charge know at any time which shop must get which ski model at which time. The scheduling of reliable delivery dates represents a definite competitive advantage.”
Some other important functions to highlight which are found in this offering include being able to drive efficiency within complex processes in financials, human resource management and distribution, making it much easier to access information while simultaneously driving visibility, improving productivity and making collaborative efforts between divisions located throughout the world much easier.
Said Gerold Fath, IT manager of Völkl Sports: “Without IFS Applications, we and our team would not be able satisfy the increasing, mainly short-term, demands on the IT department. With the old COBOL system, it took about three weeks to further develop certain functionality. Now we can implement similar tasks in one to three days, which permits us to respond to new demands within an acceptable timeframe.”
In other company news, TMCnet reported that the Engineer to Order provider is constantly evolving and just teamed with Prince Minerals, a distributor of specialty mineral products. Prince Materials has a deeply rooted footprint in a large number of markets, such as glass, foundries, refractories, cement, steel, oil and gas, and was in search of a solution that had the functionality needed to support continuous process manufacturing.
IFS worked with Prince to help the business meet multiple demands caused by various operational requirements as well as to rapidly get its solutions up and running that will continue to grow over time.
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Edited by Braden Becker