Vervaeke - Leading the Way
Also in operational excellence
'Leading the way'. That's the credo at Vervaeke. You can take that literally and figuratively. 1,000 tank trucks, 800 tank containers and 950 employees relieve customers in the chemical and oil industries with integrated logistics solutions, day in, day out. For almost 100 years and from five European countries.
The growth story of this Belgian family business is due to the family's unbridled ambition to belong to the absolute top in terms of quality, safety and service.
The collaboration between Vervaeke Group and Mentor and Men started several years ago, at a time when the company decided to further optimize its operations. Vervaeke pulled the card of operational excellence: even shorter lead times to customers, even more on-time deliveries and transparency throughout the process chain.
They would do this by digitizing processes more and better:
- Implementing uniform ways of working in the three sister companies, Vervaeke, Van der Lee and Jan Dohmen;
- Getting rid of a divided application landscape;
- Getting rid of standalone applications;
- Introducing well-managed master data.
Mentor and Men was asked to guide Vervaeke Group with project and scope management. Mentor and Men's consultants started with an application architecture study and worked out options for a high-performance future architecture. That was immediately the basis for the application and vendor selection project that followed. The choice fell on the ERP-TMS combination, each with its own vendor.
"Mentor and Men drew out an application architecture tailored to Vervaeke Group. Thanks to the experience and professional support of Yannick, consultant of Mentor and Men, it is ensured that new developments fit within this architecture," explains Jens Theunckens, Responsible Business Controlling, Process Improvement & IT.
With Mentor and Men at the helm, Vervaeke Group launched this intensive change process called WOLF. Change indeed.
Until now, Vervaeke employees had little experience changing their work habits. The fact that tried-and-true processes and systems were now being questioned was far from easy. The transition from on premise to the cloud also led to some impatience here and there.
A newly formed, multi-disciplinary BPI (Business Process Improvement) team of internal employees supervised the project. Together with the business, they drew out new processes. Among Mentor and Men's consultants, the focus was on priority monitoring, and breaking down and monitoring logical "blocks" that would keep this massive project manageable.
The project included all the typical classics: detailed analysis of processes, developments, in-and-out-of-scope. What about system integration between ERP and TMS, and between on-board computers? A middleware turned out to be the right solution. In which of the two systems (ERP or TMS) do we house which business domain: HR, SHEQ, order intake, planning, invoicing, finance, purchasing and warehouse? TMS was chosen for the entire logistics process of transport orders, from order intake to invoicing. The other functionalities are contained in the ERP application. So there is a clear separation between both systems.
The close involvement of the Vervaeke staff, the open communication and the strength of the Project Team brought confidence and progress. In terms of prioritization, the project initially focused on Vervaeke. Afterwards, it is extended to the other two sister companies, which are closely involved from the beginning to provide input and initiate changes in their own organizations.
What typifies this project very much is the acute and continuous nature of the transportation world. For example, temporarily halting planning and transportation is not an option during a go-live. Stockpiling to tide over a go-live as happens in manufacturing companies cannot be done. Planning and transportation must be guaranteed at all times.
It is precisely these aspects that make this project extra exciting for Mentor and Men. We are proud to work with this Belgian pioneer to do pioneering work for them and for their clients.
Is this story recognizable? Is your company also about to digitize, and are you looking for a partner to start up the project on the business side, and to lead it in the right direction?
