Project Boon Edam

Royal Boon Edam International B.V. began at the end of the 19th century as a carpentry business, and in 1903, produced its first revolving door. Since then, this family-owned company has grown into a global leader in entry solutions, from high-end revolving doors to access gates. The company has subsidiaries in 18 countries worldwide and three manufacturing companies in the Netherlands, China, and the United States. The latter group produces custom entry solutions for the sister companies. The sister companies, spread across four continents, implement the revolving doors for companies and contractors and provide service. We speak with Arno van Riesen – he works for the manufacturing company in the Netherlands and was part of the team responsible for implementing Merkato.

Reason for Change
A challenge for a company that has undergone such growth is to continue streamlining the production process: different markets pose different questions, and even at the local level, there are significant differences – just looking at local safety specifications, custom work in this industry on a global level requires a high degree of knowledge in possible standard product combinations. Initially, excelsheets were used to indicate these combinations, but this still resulted in orders that could not be produced without the help of engineering. Arno says, ‘At Boon Edam, we seldom say: that is impossible. Instead, we say it is not standard, but often we can still make it – that’s why we also provide solutions.’

This production approach, however, yielded a certain flexibility in the standard order forms: combinations of options were indicated as either possible or impossible, but an impossibility could still be ticked off. Consequently, orders always had to be thoroughly checked before production could start: a costly and often unnecessary trajectory. There was a need for a reliable filter that collected the knowledge and skills of the employees and thus separated the standard orders from the projects that required the expertise of the engineers.

Selection Process
Boon Edam was thus looking for software that could handle enough combination possibilities to allow standard orders to pass and catch special cases but was also flexible enough to still make those special cases possible. An earlier attempt did not find the right balance in setting up the software, so now a new look was taken at what was possible with software. Then Merkato came into view, and its simplicity immediately caught the eye. Boon Edam could quickly become operational again, and – something that Arno says ‘can certainly be mentioned’ – the price tag was also attractive.

Based on this, a pilot was started. Boon Edam had access to the system for a certain period, aiming to capture the product with the greatest diversity in the system. Arno and the rest of the implementation team received two days of training, and

‘what surprised me was that I was already busy in the system after half a day. I’m not a programmer, but the simplicity of the system made this no problem for me.’

Implementation Process
Three employees from different branches of the company (Wim de Jong, Otto van Riessen, and Arno himself) were appointed to set up Merkato: from a process perspective, from a programmer’s perspective with knowledge about the old price lists and excelsheets, and from a relational-international perspective. These three perspectives provided a nice balance in the trajectory, and in addition, much contact was maintained with the sister companies from the manufacturing company to gauge the current needs in the market worldwide and how these could be answered in the interface in the most user-friendly manner possible without the efficiency having to suffer. After that, the step was made from processing the information in the software. Arno says,

‘it went smoothly. We were pleased with the timeframe within which that happened. Also, the lines of communications were short with Quootz.’

The team also let engineering and salespeople loose on the software to search for uncaught impossibilities. After this process, the software still ran in a test phase.

The software is now used internationally to pass on order specifications to the manufacturing company. The end product is still a document based on which a design is made, but in that order specification, a significant translation has already been made – symbols at the top of the document make it immediately clear what the ‘difficulty level’ of the order is, and how it should therefore be treated further in processing.

Achieved
This has led to a significant improvement in efficiency: no longer must every order undergo a lengthy inspection procedure, but the more standard orders can be produced immediately. This has, of course, also led to an acceleration of the production process for a large part of the orders. But not only the standard orders benefit from Merkato: even the more complicated orders, which still partly require the inventiveness of engineering, can be made more transparent by the document. Arno says, ‘If 80% conforms to the standard specifications, it can be incorporated directly into the construction drawing. Engineering then only needs to think about the 20% that it still has to draw itself to make the design conform to the specifications.’ The knowledge of the employees can thus be deployed much more tactically.

In addition, it has become clearer to all employees what the standard actually is. Arno says, ‘when we let the first employees work with the program, we were ready to process problems and objections. Some employees said things like “you can still combine part A here with part B, that shouldn’t be possible.” Sometimes we processed that input, but sometimes we discovered that this was not correct: those employees were then amazed to hear that that combination had always been possible. More often, however, it was the other way around, and dealing with this has made Merkato a lot easier.’

Also, the freedom that the software offered did not lead to problems in dealing with the sales configurator. Arno says, ‘We added text fields to describe deviating details. The more freedom you give in that area, the more that freedom can of course also be misused. But we saw that people still handled it very carefully. All the specifications that can be filled in, are just filled in.’

Finally, better retention of knowledge was visible: because all product information is captured in the system, new field service employees gain insight much faster into what is and is not possible.

Future
Now that the software is running, Boon Edam is turning its gaze inward: in the future, they want the software not only to be user-friendly for the seller’s side but also to consult with engineering. What information do they want from the system, and how can it best be delivered?

In addition, Merkato is currently only used within the Boon Edam companies, by the sister companies spread across the world. In the future, Boon Edam may also want to create a portal for external parties: dealers would then have an environment within which they can place an order directly.