Raising the Bar for Excellence with Cloud-based ERP at the Centre of Automation and Business Intelligence
Eurotech Managing Director Benoit Rondard doesn’t mince words when he talks about the boldness, innovation, and quality that set the company apart. Every step of the sheet metal manufacturing process counts, and the company makes continuous improvements to drive a competitive edge.
“We aim for excellence across our entire supply chain, spanning design, development, fabrication, assembly, and logistics. And the more we utilise data, AI, and automation, the greater efficiency and speed we bring to product development.”
At the centre of the drive for excellence is Epicor® Kinetic, deployed in the cloud. An Epicor customer since 2008, Eurotech has expanded its ERP deployment to track more key performance indicators (KPIs), embrace AI, and harness real-time data to drive accountability across the organisation.
For more than 20 years, Eurotech has excelled in the design and manufacturing of high-quality sheet metal products. Today, the company is focused on helping customers stand out from their competitors, providing research and development and production support, along with services such as modeling, prototyping, and fabrication. With a reputation for innovation, Eurotech continues to broaden its product reach for high-demanding industries, introducing air filters for life sciences facilities, patch cable drawers for the fiber optic industry, and feeder pillar kiosks for the utilities industry.
“We are endlessly focused on diversification to be less dependent on a specific region or single source of revenue,” Rondard shares. “As a result of ongoing product development and regional expansion, we’ve captured more market share and sales—tripling expected revenue.”
Eurotech was running a legacy Epicor ERP system that was nearing the end-of-life and support. The company considered other solutions, such as platforms from Microsoft® and Oracle® NetSuite®, but wanted a vendor with a deep history in manufacturing-specific ERP. Migrating to Epicor Kinetic was a natural extension of the existing Epicor partnership, with a cloud deployment helping to deliver the desired resiliency and accessibility.
With our deep commitment to engineering and R&D, we invest in the best solutions that allow us to drive our business forward. For us, that solution is Epicor Kinetic.
“ERP is in the DNA of Eurotech and the company has never strayed from that core focus,” Rondard explains. “With our deep commitment to engineering and R&D, we invest in the best solutions that allow us to drive our business forward. For us, that solution is Epicor Kinetic.”
In addition to the scale and security benefits of the cloud, Eurotech recognized the implementation advantages. “By staying with Epicor, we knew the migration would be expedited, and we would be able to seamlessly migrate our existing database to the cloud,” says Rondard. He credits the ease of integration and testing environment to the record-fast pace, completed in just six months.
Being deployed in the cloud helped to deliver a clear path to the latest Kinetic upgrades and features, improved user experience, faster system performance, and anywhere access for stakeholders. For example, Rondard can validate requirements for purchase orders, extracting financial information without a VPN—eliminating the need for managers to pull separate reports. “The ease with which we can access our ERP data has modernised how we work. The move to Epicor Kinetic deployed in the cloud comes with only pros, no cons.”
Epicor Kinetic plays such a vital role in Eurotech’s supply chain processes that the company keeps pushing to add more data to the platform, leveraging integrations with existing enterprise systems. Real-time data from Kinetic informs dashboards on a range of business metrics and KPIs, such as inventory, turnover, quotations, sales, and production hours. The company also looks at key financial metrics on a daily basis, including claims, payables, and receivables.
“Epicor Kinetic allows us to be much more proactive with data and AI, pulling information from multiple sources for real-time visibility,” Rondard continues. “Every morning, the management team analyses data aggregated within Epicor Kinetic, allowing us to make quick operational improvements and increase reaction times.”
With a daily visualisation of gross revenue, employees understand the individual and collective impact on the company’s success. We quickly identify bottlenecks and drive accountability, increasing turnover by 15%.
With access to real-time business insight, Eurotech compares the estimated time of design and manufacturing to actual time spent, knowing exactly how many items (subparts and finished goods) passed through each machine on the hour, giving machine operators granular insight into productivity. The company looks at turnover data every day, as well as where employee downtime is spent, such as stepping away for technical clarification. Rondard explains how this deep data scrutiny is a massive win for employee morale and company momentum.
“With a daily visualisation of gross revenue, employees understand the individual and collective impact on the company’s success. We quickly identify bottlenecks and drive accountability, increasing turnover by 15%.”
Using the Kinetic Manufacturing Execution System (MES), the company also collects data from the manufacturing floor to maximize process automation and better utilise equipment. Understanding the total cost to produce a product, including margins and overhead, helps Eurotech maintain tight cost control. The data also supports accurate production planning, as over or underestimating timing can mean missed opportunities. With Kinetic, the company properly documents and assesses development time per customer, looking at the lowest transaction level to the highest and adjusting margins where needed.
Eurotech urges the company’s production teams to utilise Kinetic in new ways, introducing more automation where possible. The company recently replicated the use of Epicor Kinetic at a new entity in Qatar, and is integrating the platform with its eCommerce platform, Shopify™, to support the automated replenishment of standardised products.
The company’s focus on widespread automation comes with a desire to have processes for standardised products fully automated within the next few years. “To deliver high-quality and high-volume products to meet customer demand, we have to be excellent in the management of resources,” Rondard concludes. “The more data we have inside Epicor Kinetic, the more connected and automated our operations will be.”
