Bortolin Kemo optimizes component management with CADENAS

In a highly competitive environment such as the market for industrial packaging machinery, companies find themselves implementing both policies geared toward product, process and corporate culture innovation. Furthermore, they have to introduce tools and solutions that can improve the ability to be competitive on the cost side of product manufacturing. Intelligent management of parts and related codes turns out to be a strategic issue for cost optimization. A path already taken by Bortolin Kemo, which has achieved interesting results since adopting CADENAS' solution for intelligent parts management.

Bortolin Kemo, a successful Italian company owes its ability to compete to a number of factors; on the one hand, the roots, the history of the company, which was founded in 1945 and since then has been attentive to growth policies. On the other hand, it is a company that has been able to understand – from the very beginning – that behind every industrial packaging, cap or closure there are machines designed to handle every detail with the utmost care, the result of a careful design studied on the needs of the specific market.

"This is the spirit," begins Marino Sain, CEO of Bortolin Kemo, “with which we have been designing and building bottling plants and machines for the production and assembly of aluminum, tinplate and plastic closures for over 70 years. More than 200 leading companies in the food and beverage as well as chemical and pharma sectors worldwide rely on us to improve their production performance with advanced, innovative and customized technological solutions."

Culture, passion and tenacity still distinguish the entrepreneurship of Italy, which leads to the consideration of the good use of enabling technologies, with a view to supporting one's ability to compete. "For us," Sain continues, "excellence in technology is at the heart of a system of relationships: advancing a winning network of employees, customers and suppliers to create mutual and sustainable value together.

The need for the smarter management of parts arose from the increasing number of parts and the complexity of products that we experienced over time. We became aware of the presence of two concomitant factors: on the one hand, complexity, and on the other hand, also new and different ways of designing. A context in which it was necessary to go and see how to apply economies of scale, optimize inventories and costs.

We began the research with a very specific goal: the application software in addition to functionality had to have embedded a technical structure capable of supporting the introduction of the solution and its deployment. In this case we chose to talk with CADENAS, which immediately showed that it had the required prerequisites.

Initiating a pilot project with PARTsolutions was key to the deepening of the tool and the partner. In practical terms, from the outset we carried out the analysis of the new tool at a supportable time and cost. The pilot project then examined 5,000 codes of the total 100,000. Testing involved people from multiple departments so that any critical issues and queries could be contemplated and resolved before the final project was started.

In projects of this kind, the greatest criticality concerns the stable acquisition of data from multiple sources and the constant updating of information. The target of 5,000 codes did not allow for a complete analysis of the situation but offered valuable insights into the creation of the final project. The pilot project was extended to all part codes both drawing and trade with the following objectives: to develop the reuse of parts and their work cycles at all stages from design to production to logistics, optimization of the number of active codes, recovery of existing similar stock components to generate new parts, reduction of intervention/supply time, and improvement of quoting and summarization capabilities.

I will be brief. Excellent technical level. CADENAS' contact person for our company is Mr. Stefano Biondi. An extremely knowledgeable resource who followed us with attention and dedication until the goal was achieved. The feeling he has conveyed to us is not only his own good preparation but of a widespread sense of customer support, somewhat pervasive throughout CADENAS.

Tangible benefits: reduction of duplicate parts, unnecessary new designs (reduced design time) and product information search time.

Intangible benefits: there is a single window that contains all the information (ERP, CAD, PLM, etc.) needed to perform faster and more intuitive data reading, improved forecasting capabilities, awareness of the value of parts.

"In summary," Sain concludes, "when you undertake the introduction of new tools or solutions, you just have the feeling that it might work.... Our experience with CADENAS has confirmed that it is possible to attack that hidden area of unseen (unaccounted for) costs and better optimize part management. A result that positively impacts our income statement and allows us to optimize costs and margins."

Bortolin Kemo is a company of undoubted success that has continually conquered with ideas, ability, choices, decisions and, last but not least, the tenacity typical of a land and a family that has been able to invest and work looking at continuous improvement. Once again intuition, passion and lots and lots and lots of work...there is no trick, there is no deception. This is the road that leads to the high maintenance of a company's ability to compete.

"For us, the Bortolin Kemo project is a great example of how CADENAS technologies absolutely cut across not only any manufacturing sector but also company size. Managing data properly and adopting active policies for reuse and standardization are topics that embrace all companies, not just and always the big ones, and thanks to tools like Geometric Search this is achievable and with tangible results. In addition, another aspect that makes me proud is the appreciation for consulting and technology implementation support, which have always been a central point for us at Italian CADENAS in our relationship with our customers. Technologies are as important as are the people who know how to use them correctly." Luca Borghi, CEO CADENAS Italy.

Author: Massimo Fucci

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