Overview

Combilift is the largest global manufacturer of multi-directional forklifts and an acknowledged leader in long-load handling solutions.  Innovation, Flexibility, and Service are the ethos on which Combilift’s success is built and has seen us become the world’s fastest-growing forklift manufacturer, exporting to more than 85 countries and with more than 60,000 trucks in use worldwide. No other manufacturer in the world can deliver the same level of customization and adaptability or cater so effectively to the diverse needs of every individual customer, whether their enterprise is large or small. 

Supernova Award Category

Data to Decisions

The Problem

Since the pandemic, Combilift has been re-thinking how to use modern technologies for better decision-making to improve the customer and employee experience. 

The Global Parts Department was using knowledge-based ‘Related Items’ to recommend parts when generating a quote for a needed part for service.  Related item recommendations are not data-driven, so deciding what parts should be quoted for a service is not always accurate.  This has a negative downstream impact, especially for our customer experience.  First, the service engineer must stop work and order a needed part, with discounts and free shipping since the customer is dissatisfied.  This is due to the customer now having more equipment downtime than expected – sometimes up to 48 hours. It hurts our bottom line since any delayed service creates more costs such as paying the engineer for more time.  Also, we lose revenue if spare parts are not included in the quote because the customer will go to a local dealer to purchase the spare part. 

The Production Department relied on daily production KPIs created in excel to monitor and make decisions for the day.  If real-time information was needed to monitor an issue, managers would physically walk to the shopfloor to obtain it, taking up to 30 min per day.  Not only did employees waste time manually generating daily snapshots and walking around the shopfloor, but the data was not fresh, placing management in reactive mode instead of proactive mode.  

The Solution

Infor’s Platform Technology is foundational to our Infor CloudSuite Industrial ERP, we partnered with Infor to leverage integrated cloud technologies to address key priorities for improving employee and customer retention through better tools for decision making. 

Parts recommender was delivered to our global parts department to improve the customer experience, but also complete service jobs faster, lower costs, and generate more revenue. Using integrated Infor Coleman AI, the parts recommender takes 3 years of past order data to generate upsell and cross-sell item recommendations. 

Near real-time production KPIs were delivered to our production managers so they can do their job better, save time, and improve production performance. When a manager logs into CloudSuite at the start of the day, a personalized homepage provides immediate visibility into the production line to better plan the day and reduce the stress of not having to go to the production floor for status updates.   

The results

In under 60 days of effort, AI-driven recommendations were delivered to the Global Parts department to create a better customer experience and retain them.  When a customer, dealer, or salesperson makes an inquiry, the parts manager simply opens the CloudSuite Parts Estimator screen and upsell, cross-sell, and knowledge-based ‘related items’ are embedded, making it easy to consume, faster to make decisions, and generate more accurate quotes. Customers are happier because jobs are more likely to be completed on time, with spare parts on hand, to reduce downtime of equipment.  Employees are more productive and contribute to reducing the bottom line when generating quotes, especially new hires.  Finally, Combilift saves money since service jobs are less likely to be extended.   

In under 30 days of effort, personalized homepages were delivered to Production Management to create a better employee experience and retain them. With on-demand visibility to Production KPIs, management is more proactive, can quickly address issues, make decisions, and better plan daily tasks.  Refreshed every 15 minutes, the homepages embed information widgets designed to easily provide insights, call exceptions to your attention, and provide direct links to the areas where you do most of your daily work. In fact, Combilift is continuing to build out homepages across each line of business, transforming the mega ERP Cloudsuite into a more productive and user-friendly experience. 

Metrics

AI-driven parts recommendation, the following benefits: 

• Parts manager spends less time in determining related parts, 20 minutes to 5 minutes  
• Generates more accurate quotes:
  • Service jobs completed faster by 30%  
  • Reduce costs for service jobs by 40%  
  • Improve customer experience due to less equipment downtime  
• Increase revenues with more accurate upsell and cross-sell 
  • Increase revenue per transaction by 30% 
  • Increase profits  more revenue and less costs  
• Less time in training new hires  
• Time to value under 60 days of effort 
• With personalized homepages, following benefits: 
• Production managers are more efficient with on-demand access at their desks to near real time Production KPIs  
• Management can react faster to improve KPIs 
• Save 75 min each day to manually prepare a daily snapshot of Production KPIs  
• Save managers 30 min per day by removing the need to walk shopfloor to get a status on KPIs  
• Save development costs with framework for the creation of pages and widgets that are highly flexible and configurable.  
• Time to value under 30 days of effort 

The Technology

The Infor Platform Technology or Infor OS is a service-based platform to quickly build application capabilities tailored to our needs.  We use Coleman AI to create product recommender and Portal homepages to create a near real-time view of Production KPIs. Infor Data Lake services takes care of collecting and managing all CloudSuite data and applies Coleman AI services to get insights. Portal is the web-based platform that Infor applications run within, including homepages. 

Disruptive Factor

Discuss the impact of your project. Why is your project game-changing? How have you challenged the status quo? What sets you apart from others in the space? Tell us about your external/internal disruption. 1500 characters 

Combilift is a continually growing business, and by applying cloud solutions to make things efficient, accurate, and easier to use, we don’t have to worry about acquiring more resources at the same rate. I see a future where employees and machines work side-by-side to keep up with growth. Recruiting is challenging and costly with the diminishing workforce so with Infor’s Platform Technology we plan to do more with less, and that’s game-changing for us.

Shining Moment

With new hires and less experienced staff in the parts department, we knew that there were missed opportunities because of inaccurate quotes. For example, if someone wants a water pump, a trained employee knows to add a gasket. But a new hire would not, leaving the customer to go to another vendor to purchase a gasket. We are excited about Product Recommender getting smarter and smarter so we can bring in more revenue while keeping our customers happy.