Case study
How VMT Tehased increased their engineers' productivity by 40% with Eziil
VMT Tehased has produced project-based metal components since 1995. They carry out on-site installation and the group also includes its own hot dip galvanizing and plasma cutting company. They aim to be a reliable and flexible subcontractor.
Eziil helped VMT Tehased go from gut feeling to good planning, significantly increase their turnover, engineers' productivity and supply security. They also cut their engineer onboarding time, as well as overall stress levels.
VMT Tehased Products: mainly 3 types of structural steel components and kits for industrial and commercial use:
Staff: 130 people Factories: 3 with production area around 9700 m² Production capacity: 5500 products with around 7500 tons of steel per year 2021 turnover: € 14.5 million with € 500K revenue 5 year Y2Y growth: 12% Home page: http://www.vmt.ee/en/tehased.html |
Life before Eziil
Before implementing Eziil BOM, VMT Tehased production procedures were already at a very good level, as they had obtained all the main production certificates (CE, EN 1090-1 EXC3, EN ISO 3834-2, IWE, EN ISO 9606-1, EN ISO 15614-154). However, most of these procedures were still on paper or in people's heads.
All their BOMs were prepared in Excel spreadsheets and stored on the server according to a directory system. There was a spreadsheet for every project and stage of the project, which were quite standardized, yet different in some aspects. All in all, production data was scattered in different sources which left too much room for interpretation.
Their main production technology challenges fell into 5 categories:
Before implementing Eziil BOM, VMT Tehased production procedures were already at a very good level, as they had obtained all the main production certificates (CE, EN 1090-1 EXC3, EN ISO 3834-2, IWE, EN ISO 9606-1, EN ISO 15614-154). However, most of these procedures were still on paper or in people's heads.
All their BOMs were prepared in Excel spreadsheets and stored on the server according to a directory system. There was a spreadsheet for every project and stage of the project, which were quite standardized, yet different in some aspects. All in all, production data was scattered in different sources which left too much room for interpretation.
Their main production technology challenges fell into 5 categories:
- Managing spreadsheets
- Standardizing engineers' work
- Onboarding engineers
- Planning projects and deliveries
- Managing more complicated projects
- Overall stress levels
How Eziil helped make BOM process more simple and efficient for VMT Tehased
VMT adopted Eziil BOM in 2018. As a result, VMT Tehased:
- Raised their engineers' work efficiency by 40%
- Increased their turnover from 8 million to 14 million euros without hiring new people
- Increased their supply security from 65% to 98%
- Stayed profitable despite the rise of input costs
- Significantly reduced their overall stress levels
1. Managing spreadsheets
Managing product technology in spreadsheets was a task on its own. The procedure consisted of different spreadsheets and steps that the people just had to know they had to fill. The data was scattered in different spreadsheets and you needed to create additional separate spreadsheets to get the full overview. The engineers just had to know that after the BOM spreadsheets, they also had to fill the overview spreadsheets. Getting to know the system took time and keeping track of it wasted mental effort. If someone forgot to follow the procedure, the overview was already lost.
Also, there were many engineers and separate Excels. You had to keep the files in the right place and the right format, sort the data, fix it up for printing, etc. If you needed to add something, you had to go over all the spreadsheets and people who used them. All this administrative work was monotonous and it was very simple to mess something up by mistake.
Life with Eziil
With Eziil, you always have a clear overview and you can be sure that the data is correct. Everyone uses the same articles and operations and understands the projects the same way. The engineers can focus on what's really important, not juggling and updating the spreadsheets. There is less room for error and even if something does happen, you can always restore the project from backup.
Eziil also has many convenient features that speed up the work, e.g. Excel copy-paste import, unified material article base, pre-defined routing, operations attributes, etc. Also, the all time favourite, printing out work orders. Sorting the data and the drawings could take up to a day and almost a quarter of the overall project preparation time. Now it takes less than 5 seconds with All data isdata already sorted and necessary drawings included.
Managing product technology in spreadsheets was a task on its own. The procedure consisted of different spreadsheets and steps that the people just had to know they had to fill. The data was scattered in different spreadsheets and you needed to create additional separate spreadsheets to get the full overview. The engineers just had to know that after the BOM spreadsheets, they also had to fill the overview spreadsheets. Getting to know the system took time and keeping track of it wasted mental effort. If someone forgot to follow the procedure, the overview was already lost.
Also, there were many engineers and separate Excels. You had to keep the files in the right place and the right format, sort the data, fix it up for printing, etc. If you needed to add something, you had to go over all the spreadsheets and people who used them. All this administrative work was monotonous and it was very simple to mess something up by mistake.
Life with Eziil
With Eziil, you always have a clear overview and you can be sure that the data is correct. Everyone uses the same articles and operations and understands the projects the same way. The engineers can focus on what's really important, not juggling and updating the spreadsheets. There is less room for error and even if something does happen, you can always restore the project from backup.
Eziil also has many convenient features that speed up the work, e.g. Excel copy-paste import, unified material article base, pre-defined routing, operations attributes, etc. Also, the all time favourite, printing out work orders. Sorting the data and the drawings could take up to a day and almost a quarter of the overall project preparation time. Now it takes less than 5 seconds with All data isdata already sorted and necessary drawings included.
2. Standardizing engineers' work
With spreadsheets, every engineer had the freedom to design their BOMs exactly as they liked it. For example, one engineer might call a field "X2" and a second engineer might say "X2Y2" about the same exact thing. Or for angle profile length, someone would indicate the gross length, the second the net, and the third the average.
Of course they did it with best intentions, but this caused confusion in the production team, errors in printing, stress for purchasing, etc. Often, this resulted in material shortage, wrong order of cutting, or other errors. Going over the error and production technology with the engineer wasted additional time.
With spreadsheets, every engineer had the freedom to design their BOMs exactly as they liked it. For example, one engineer might call a field "X2" and a second engineer might say "X2Y2" about the same exact thing. Or for angle profile length, someone would indicate the gross length, the second the net, and the third the average.
Of course they did it with best intentions, but this caused confusion in the production team, errors in printing, stress for purchasing, etc. Often, this resulted in material shortage, wrong order of cutting, or other errors. Going over the error and production technology with the engineer wasted additional time.
If the work order is vague, it leaves production a lot of room for interpretation. The question is if you're willing to take that risk and how much it can cost you.
Life with Eziil
Eziil BOM gave the engineers a top-notch tool to help them save time and do their job as well as possible. With Eziil, the procedure and operations are the same for all engineers and their work is always standardized. There is a specific field for everything and all data is in the same format and in the same way. All other parties have a clear understanding of the product technology. This also reduces unplanned work for engineers, as there is less back-and-forth to clear things up.
Eziil BOM gave the engineers a top-notch tool to help them save time and do their job as well as possible. With Eziil, the procedure and operations are the same for all engineers and their work is always standardized. There is a specific field for everything and all data is in the same format and in the same way. All other parties have a clear understanding of the product technology. This also reduces unplanned work for engineers, as there is less back-and-forth to clear things up.
Martin Lehemets, the COO of VMT Tehased notes that onboarding time for engineers has fallen to a week - as opposed to the previous 3 months. "Long onboarding time can really put a strain on company growth. Now, finding new people is easier and we can even involve rental staff, which was unreasonable before."
3. Onboarding engineers
With the complicated spreadsheet procedure, onboarding an engineer to a full capacity took at least 3 months, sometimes even more. The new employee had to reinvent the wheel every time as to how to convey information to purchasing and production as clearly and fast as possible. Not to mention, you had to be a serious Excel guru to get things done.
Life with Eziil
With BOM software, the process is straightforward and clear. Engineer onboarding barrier is lower and you can give more complicated problems to less experienced employees. Many tasks are simplified or automatized, which also shortens the learning curve.
4. Planning projects and deliveries
Previously, planning calculations used to rely on turnover, which in practice was basically gut feeling. Noone had any clear understanding of how much time some job would take and how much resource they had to spare. When more complicated projects overlapped, the whole production could halt to a stop.
Delivery deadlines were also more divination than prediction, or set based on client expectations. Only the end deadline was set and anything happening before that was just collective effort. If sales needed a status update on a project, they had to physically check the situation on the production floor. Giving mid-term project reports was a stressful challenge.
Previously, planning calculations used to rely on turnover, which in practice was basically gut feeling. Noone had any clear understanding of how much time some job would take and how much resource they had to spare. When more complicated projects overlapped, the whole production could halt to a stop.
Delivery deadlines were also more divination than prediction, or set based on client expectations. Only the end deadline was set and anything happening before that was just collective effort. If sales needed a status update on a project, they had to physically check the situation on the production floor. Giving mid-term project reports was a stressful challenge.
"Today, big projects might fall behind schedule for up to a week. In the old days, it was not uncommon to fall behind for several months," notes Martin.
Life with Eziil
Martin says that better planning has probably been the biggest change: "Eziil gives everyone a real-time overview of the current state of resources and workload. We've become more precise and we can make firm promises. We used to play catch up with our deadlines, but today we're usually ahead of schedule. You can see straight away, if we can take on more work, what promises we can make and if we could run into bottlenecks. Instead of guessing and opinions, we have hard data - it's an enormous transformation."
Eziil also helps with intermediate planning. Any big deadline gets divided into sub-deadlines for engineers, purchasing, production, etc. This way you can respond quickly if a project starts going off course.
Martin says that better planning has probably been the biggest change: "Eziil gives everyone a real-time overview of the current state of resources and workload. We've become more precise and we can make firm promises. We used to play catch up with our deadlines, but today we're usually ahead of schedule. You can see straight away, if we can take on more work, what promises we can make and if we could run into bottlenecks. Instead of guessing and opinions, we have hard data - it's an enormous transformation."
Eziil also helps with intermediate planning. Any big deadline gets divided into sub-deadlines for engineers, purchasing, production, etc. This way you can respond quickly if a project starts going off course.
5. Managing more complicated projects
VMT Tehased were shifting to more bigger and complicated projects. This put additional strain on preparing the production technology as well as possible. All information had to be very precise to minimize production risks. In addition to projects being complicated, they also had multiple stages. If anything changed in one stage, you also had to reflect that in the next stage - missing any spreadsheet updates became a constant source for error.
Life with Eziil
With Eziil, all data is in one place and managing complicated multi-stage projects is simple, clear and concise. Changing something in one stage reflects automatically in other stages, which mitigates risk for error. You can also give more complicated projects to less experienced engineers, as they can use a previous similar project as an example.
VMT Tehased were shifting to more bigger and complicated projects. This put additional strain on preparing the production technology as well as possible. All information had to be very precise to minimize production risks. In addition to projects being complicated, they also had multiple stages. If anything changed in one stage, you also had to reflect that in the next stage - missing any spreadsheet updates became a constant source for error.
Life with Eziil
With Eziil, all data is in one place and managing complicated multi-stage projects is simple, clear and concise. Changing something in one stage reflects automatically in other stages, which mitigates risk for error. You can also give more complicated projects to less experienced engineers, as they can use a previous similar project as an example.
6. Overall stress levels
With spreadsheets and gut-feeling planning, the stress levels used to be through the roof. Deadlines were missed since there were constant surprises coming up. At one moment, there was too much work, the next, too little.
Life with Eziil
With Eziil, things are more organized and clear and run smoothly. Rainer says that stress levels play an important role in employee motivation: "It's a shame all this Excel madness is not directly measurable. Many things got taken care of on the go with a lot of tension. Noone calculated how much that really cost, but in hindsight the cost seems high - very high. If you'd ask our engineers today to start using spreadsheets again, they definitely wouldn't agree to that."
With spreadsheets and gut-feeling planning, the stress levels used to be through the roof. Deadlines were missed since there were constant surprises coming up. At one moment, there was too much work, the next, too little.
Life with Eziil
With Eziil, things are more organized and clear and run smoothly. Rainer says that stress levels play an important role in employee motivation: "It's a shame all this Excel madness is not directly measurable. Many things got taken care of on the go with a lot of tension. Noone calculated how much that really cost, but in hindsight the cost seems high - very high. If you'd ask our engineers today to start using spreadsheets again, they definitely wouldn't agree to that."
What's next?
As the next step, VMT is implementing the Eziil procurement module. Martin says: "Eziil BOM data is the foundation for all upcoming processes. Next, we'll systematize purchasing and want to move all our sub-contract, project-based and standard material purchases to Eziil. We're halfway there and already see remarkable results."
Are you looking for the right BOM tool for your metal production?
Book a 30-minute demo and see Eziil in action.
Are you looking for the right BOM tool for your metal production?
Book a 30-minute demo and see Eziil in action.
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