PACKAGING & LABEL PRINTING
Olegário Fernandes is a producer of cardboard boxes, self-adhesive label and wet-glue and film labels. The company was established in 1922 and since then it has grown into a company with 140 employees and 10.000 m2 premises, updated and automated production lines and work equipment.
The wish to provide quality products and services and to ensure customer satisfaction has led the company into taking the decision of implementing MIS|ERP solution. Sistrade® MIS|ERP system has met all the need of the company and allowed for all the business and production processes to be managed in just one system.
Another huge advantage of Sistrade® is its 100% web-based architecture where the user is not dependent on the hardware and operating system. The user can access all the features of MIS|ERP using a laptop, tablet or smartphone, regardless of operating system or browser.
OLEGÁRIO FERNANDES AND SISTRADE ERP (PDF VERSION)
SISTRADE, APIGRAF premium partner, presents one of its customers as a success story of SISTRADE software implementation. T&G is talking to Cristina Baeta from Olegário Fernandes.
1. Olegário Fernandes is a leading company on the national market, during the last years the company has developed its business in various specific areas. Could you tell us more about Olegário Fernandes and the company’s history?
C.B. - Olegário Fernandes is a company with a long tradition in the printing industry. It was founded in 1922. In 1968, Mr. João Baeta, the main shareholder of the company, acquired the license of the company and began its development, first, producing commercial and advertising works and later, paper labels. In the early 90s, Olegário Fernandes moves into new manufacturing facilities and initiates a strategic shift of its activity into the area of cartons, medical package inserts and paper labels. In 2003, with the aim of strengthening the productive capacity and technical conditions, the company extends the plant and installs new production lines of adhesive labels. Over the past few years, the constant concern of Olegário Fernandes has been the technological upgrading in the areas of packaging and adhesive labels and qualification of its resources in order to respond promptly to the needs of each client and the requirements of domestic and foreign markets.
2. What are the main products of the company?
C.B. - Currently, the main products produced by Olegário Fernandes are boxes, glued boxes, adhesive labels, medical package inserts, paper labels and foil labels. We are a company specializing in the production of different types of packaging material, which can be considered an added value to the markets we supply.
3. What are your main markets?
C.B. - The main markets that Olegário Fernandes supplies are the pharmaceutical market, the agro-food market and the toiletries and household cleaning products market. In any of the markets where we operate, we seek to provide every customer with diverse and complete service, producing packaging materials, cartons, adhesive labels or medical leaflets.
4. Olegário Fernandes has implemented integrated management system – ERP from SISTRADE. Did you already know the company?
C.B. - We already knew SISTRADE company as a supplier of ERP Sistrade. A few years ago we saw a demonstration of its integrated management system, but at the time we decided not to change the system. Sistrade company is very dynamic in its disclosure and communication policy, whereby, over the past few years, we were also following its development and internationalization through the published articles and other marketing actions.
5. What influenced Olegário Fernandes to implement an integrated management system? What are the advantages of the system in terms of cost reduction and streamlining business processes?
C.B. - Olegário Fernandes had an integrated management system implemented since the year 2000, but these were two separate systems (one for commercial, production, stocks, planning areas and another for the administrative and financial area) that were connected. However, all areas of the company were not integrated, particularly, important aspects of the technical area, such as technical specifications, tools databases (cutters, braille, reserves and other) as well as the connection of estimates with job orders, management of raw materials lots and other. With the development and growth of Olegário Fernandes, there began to emerge new needs that the system we were using was no longer able to solve. With Sistrade integrated management system, we now have one ERP, which allows integrating all areas of the company, having real-time and good time information and simplifying some processes. We have started working with the system recently and we are still optimising some areas, but we already feel some streamlining in the process and we expect to reduce some costs, including task execution time.
6. The implementation process of an ERP such as Sistrade in a company with the dimension and production process complexity of Olegário Fernandes, is a time-consuming process. Could you tell more about the progress of the process?
C.B. - It was a process that took longer and required more work than originally planned. We did not start up on the planned date, which was the beginning of 2014 and only started up in the last quarter of 2014. But we consider that the process as a whole went well, considering it was a total change in all areas of the company. It required an additional effort of the people involved in the project, both on behalf of Olegário Fernandes and SISTRADE, in some specific situations to find the best solutions.
7. Did you find the teamwork a positive experience?
C.B. - Yes, from the beginning we were able to work together and this joint work was improving and becoming more effective as the project implementation has progressed. Both parties were allocating to the project the necessary elements at each stage of the process.
8. In which areas Sistrade was implemented? Sistrade is covering different areas of the company, including administrative and financial area?
C.B. - Olegário Fernandes implemented Sistrade in all the areas of the company, Estimating, Commercial and technical management, Production, Scheduling, Purchases, Stocks, Shipping, Quality Control, Maintenance, as well as Administrative and Financial management and Human Resource management. As it is an integrated management system, it made complete sense to implement it in all the areas of the company, in order to simplify processes and have permanent access to integrated information.
9. Was the fact that Sistrade ERP allows managing estimating and production of labels and packaging crucial in choosing to work with SISTRADE?
C.B. - During the selection of ERP to implement, it was essential for Olegário Fernandes that it would allow integrating all areas of the company, allowing management of various types of product we manufacture (packaging, stickers, labels, leaflets) and various printing processes that we have (offset, flexography, letterpress, digital) and Sistrade ERP responded to these requirements.
10. One of many Sistrade ERP strengths is production management – how many production data collection points there are in Olegário Fernandes?
C.B. - The company’s shop floor consists of around 20 data collection points, allowing real-time production data collection and consequently, having immediate information of the status of each job and its times and production costs.
11. How many people use Sistrade ERP, including the production department?
C.B. - Including the production data collection, there are more or less 100 people using Sistrade ERP. There are only several employees, at the level of printing helpers or finishing operators who are not using Sistrade ERP.
12. Overall, are you satisfied with Sistrade ERP?
C.B. - Yes, we are satisfied with the implementation of ERP Sistrade, we consider it to be an asset in the company's management, which allows integrating and simplifying some procedures and having better background information in the daily management of the company and in decision-making. We believe that the process is not yet fully complete, we are still optimizing the implementation in some areas and improving some of the outputs that the system can provide. One advantage of Sistrade is that in general, it can be adapted to customer's needs. As a customer, sometimes we would like solutions and answers to our needs to be faster, but we are aware that this is a time-consuming process.
13. Would you recommend Sistrade to other companies?
C.B. - Yes, we think that the implementation of Sistrade ERP is an asset to the management of printing companies and from our experience, a real asset to the packaging and label producing companies.
Website: https://olegario-fernandes.pt/en/
