Ultriva by Upland recently completed a comprehensive lean solution for a leading laboratory equipment manufacturing company which designs, manufactures, and sells scientific equipment and instruments to customers worldwide. It has approximately 39,000 employees globally and supplies customers within hospitals, research facilities, labs, and pharmaceutical companies.

The company had been slowly implementing electronic Kanban on their own but had outgrown the ability to continue with the existing system. Parts were not easily scalable when a forecast shifted, and the company looked to increase the amount of participation from suppliers as well as to streamline their processes through integration into the ERP environment.

After evaluating other supply chain execution software solutions, the firm selected Ultriva’s Lean Suite featuring the Collaborative Supply Portal with electronic Kanban. Using the Collaborative Supply Portal, communication to the supply base could now include both Kanban and MRP driven parts.

This process improvement methodology allowed the company to increase the amount of participation from suppliers, while streamlining process through ERP integration. The firm simultaneously grew their electronic Kanban system.

The entire integration project took just four weeks, resulting in greater supplier collaboration and improved performances. Since Ultriva’s Supply Portal is web-based and simple to use, the manufacturers is now proactively communicates with many more suppliers and has a goal to have 90% supplier adoption utilizing the Ultriva portal by the end of the year.

The company gained the ability to collaboratively communicate new orders, order changes, forecast and receipts through their environment seamlessly using Ultriva software, regardless if the parts are on the Kanban system or the MRP system. This helped cement a stronger supplier relationship. The company was able to reduce the value of inventory controlled by Ultriva by over 21% and increase turns by over 27%. By moving more suppliers to a consumption-based replenishment system the company reduced lead times from the supply base by over 25%.