Competition in the plastic packaging industry for food is tough. Raw material costs rise with international oil prices. Customers demand quick and innovative design solutions - and they expect near-perfect control of the supply chain.
Profit margins are tight, and since Færch Plast produces 1.3 billion packages per year, even very small productivity improvements travel directly to the bottom line. That’s why it is an ongoing corporate goal to make production more efficient. While the company closely monitored a number of key production processes, these metrics were captured in different ways in different systems – and were not usually comparable.
TARGIT wins over MS Access
For managers at Færch Plast the problem was not so much getting the production data. It was making sense of it across several systems simply and quickly. According to Niels Brøndsted, Business Controller, “In the beginning, we brought in some consultants to build a system based on Microsoft Access, so we could order reports from this. But the setup was slow - and not very dynamic. We couldn’t change the reports ourselves, and it was impossible to collate data from the different systems and perform analyses across the different structures.”
According to Niels Brøndsted, it did not take long to decide on TARGIT Business Intelligence Suite. “We looked at other solutions, but only TARGIT met all of our criteria for flexibility, user friendliness, and ability to collate data from many sources. We wanted to be able to design and change reports by ourselves – for a reasonable price. That’s what TARGIT delivered.”
Company-wide gains
Færch Plast quickly realized that TARGIT could make a difference in other departments as well. Today a total of 80 users across the company rely on TARGIT for key reports and analyses. “We’re really pleased that TARGIT is also available in a web-based version,” says Brøndsted. “This allows our sales people across Europe to log onto the system and access fresh data”.
Færch Plast uses TARGIT to analyze data for sales, logistics, quality control and even wages. But the most striking results are still delivered within the production area. “TARGIT has been a key tool in preparing the analyses that have allowed us to increase manufacturing productivity. When we work to optimize production processes, it’s important that we get the data that permits corrective action. TARGIT is updated daily and gives us the perspective we need to act quickly,” concludes Niels Brøndsted.
