Customer Story

Improving logistics management — Novacura Flow at Rockfin

December 14, 2017

ERP systems have firmly taken root in Polish companies and have become standard, especially in large enterprises. A problem that is cropping up more and more often, however, is that the IT systems implemented to support management have exhausted their capabilities and cannot keep up with the dynamic development of companies and their processes.

Rockfin Sp. z o.o. is an engineering company which is involved in the design, manufacture, and servicing of oil systems, including lubrication systems, hydraulic drive and control systems, and filtration/maintenance systems for industrial oils. It is a purely design-oriented company — 98 per cent of purchases and production is carried out for the needs of specific projects.

Rockfin’s challenge was to automate processes in the storage of components, i.e. production-ready parts delivered from suppliers, and to extend the IFS system already in place.
The company’s goal was to improve quality and reduce lead times of tasks performed every day in the warehouse and to increase oversight of material flows throughout the company. The management staff were primarily focused on replacing the system of performing operations manually and recording data from tracking sheets with one that makes use of mobile devices and identifies parts stored in the warehouse by means of barcodes.
Important factors in vendor selection were implementation time — as short as possible — and flexibility with regard to the individual needs of the company, including the functionality of the current ERP system. The company wanted to translate its active processes into bespoke software, rather than adapt its flows to off-the-shelf IT tools. The solution that met these expectations was Novacura Flow.

Rockfin Sp. z o.o.

In this solution they used the concept of logistic unit, which allows components to be grouped by type or project. This radically shortened and optimized lead times for all their inventory transactions.The advantage of this solution was the process-based approach to rolling out the system and the short implementation time.

The biggest surprise for Rockfin was that the first processes that worked on mobile devices according to their requirements were developed during the implementation workshops. Together with Novacura at Rockfin head office, we established how these processes should function. Seeing possible solutions, they also started to add new functionalities on their own, which allowed for even better work optimization.

The solution provided by Novacura Poland has enabled them to work out and implement processes for managing item throughput into sections according to project number or melt. Thanks to NC Flow our ERP system stores data about the individual sections. Each Flow user has on-line access to it — which is essential from the warehouse operation point of view — directly from the terminal screen, and inventory transactions are performed directly in the ERP. This way how they reduced the lead time of inventory tasks and save paper.

We implement all comments from employees on a regular basis by ourselves. An employee who feels an interface window is lacking, or has a different idea about data display and wants it to be faster, reports the issue to me. After 10–15 minutes we are able to apply the change. Such issues used to take a few weeks to resolve; today, we have a new functionality that facilitates work immediately” (...)

Piotr Itrich

Rockfin Group

The product provided by Novacura Poland is a flexible and user-friendly tool. These features give Rockfin’s the opportunity to develop processes by entire system management department according to the specific requirements. They were able to see scope for cooperation with Novacura. It was for them simply easier to use solutions proven and tested in practice, rather than develop them from scratch. Especially since the cooperation with Novacura has been exemplary. They got answers for all the questions and concerns.

Rockfin currently uses eleven terminals at three locations. Data at the warehouses are automatically read and entered into the system. The company is confident that the data are correct and of appropriate quality, and each authorized person has easy on-line access to them.