Scanfil - Faster processing of customer’s orders
Scanfil | Customer Stories

Scanfil - Faster processing of customer’s orders

Scanfil is a contract manufacturer in the electronics industry with factories located in Sieradz. It manufactures systems for companies such as ABB, Axis, Getinge, Nibe, and Toyota. This requires cooperation with the customer and continuous adaptation of production processes to his needs, including even changes of the entire production line.

The company must continuously shorten the process so as to obtain the highest quality at the lowest production costs and be competitive on the market. And contract manufacturing creates organizational complexity.

To be closer to the customer, Scanfil has dedicated customer teams. Every important customer has a person from customer service, logistics, technology, production, or purchasing. In order not to reduce the quality of work, the same employees are at the same time in the logistics, technology, production, and purchasing teams.

SCANFIL’s challenge

We need to know a lot about cooperation: how each department, production, and logistics work. To set up production and the entire process on machines. Engineers and technicians need this information. - Process Engineer, SCANFIL Poland

The main challenge for Scanfil was to improve the processing of customer's orders so that the process was as short as possible, at the attractive price and of the best quality.

With a smooth process, you don't need to hire and train a lot of new people to deal with a larger number of customers. This enables faster development of the company and service for new customers without hiring new people, which results in savings.

It was also important for the company to quickly introduce duties to new employees, making it easier for them to obtain information in the company and to learn from older employees since a lot of people are new in the company for the last 3 years.

Management of work in a complex organization is a challenge itself. Employees are simultaneously assigned to two teams, which makes it difficult to orientate in the functioning of the company and the work of other teams. And in addition, contract manufacturing requires thorough knowledge of the work between teams handling logistics, technological and production processes, or contacting the customer.

Network Perspective in SCANFIL

Having data about the cooperation of people and teams in the Network Perspective, Scanfil was able to see the actual processes at the level of the entire company and each team and department. This gave answers to many questions, such as between which cooperation teams there are too many and where it is missing, or where bottlenecks are slowing down the process, or where there are loops in which information circulates, and the process goes no further.

Customer profiles in the app allowed to find all people from the company who work with a given customer with one click: logistics specialists, people from customer service, technology, or production.

In the Network Perspective of Scanfil, employees could also quickly find key people in each team and people working between teams, which supported fast and effective contact in the process - in order to obtain information, employees did not have to rely only on managers of other teams.

On the other hand, new employees having employee and team profiles could immediately orientate themselves in their work and quickly answer questions such as "whom from the logistics our team works with," but they could also see in the app how people already experienced work and with whom they contact in similar matters.

Results

Thanks to the data about cooperation, Scanfil got to know the actual processes in the company. Among 52 teams, 2 teams (3%) were found to be bottlenecks when it comes to processing the customer's orders. Only 5 teams (9%) turned out to have the greatest impact on the speed of order processing. Already in the first week, shortening of processes began - prioritizing tasks, eliminating unnecessary activities, and introducing wider improvements, for example, related to the circulation of documents.

When I look at the cooperation of my team, I can see how many matters are determined between the customer and logistics.- Operational Purchasing Specialist, SCANFIL Poland

The time of processing customer orders was shortened because employees could quickly reach a person whose scope of duties and competencies will allow them to settle a particular topic quickly. And even when there is no manager, or the case concerns work at the interface between two teams.

Thanks to the network perspective, I know leaders of teams. When I want to perform a task, I know that I can get along quickly with that person. With the manager, it is way more difficult; he is busy all the time, on meetings, etc. - Quality engineer, SCANFIL Poland

Access to the actual process in the company gave new employees great independence in taking actions and helped them learn from older employees, which allowed to shorten the time of introducing new people from months to weeks and significantly increase the quality of work in the first months.

I often had trouble finding people. I used to ask a friend from the neighboring desk who I should get along with, and he either indicated someone or I had to ask more people. It was wandering around, a long way. Now I reach, check, and call a specific name, and I already know everything.- Quality Project Manager, SCANFIL Poland


April 22, 2021

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