Cimcorp Group

The Company: About Cimcorp Group

Cimcorp Group, part of Murata Machinery, Ltd. (Muratec), provides material handling systems for the tire industry and advanced robotics solutions for the food & beverage, retail, e‑commerce, FMCG, and postal services sectors. With over 550 employees, a head office in Ulvila, Finland, and subsidiaries in Canada and the United States, Cimcorp systems are used in over 40 countries across six continents.

The Situation: Strategic Focus

Cimcorp develops advanced robotic solutions for intralogistics, optimizing material flows in warehouses, distribution centers, and manufacturing facilities. By reducing operating costs, ensuring traceability, and improving efficiency, Cimcorp’s systems are used worldwide within manufacturing and distribution centers in 40 countries.

The company relies on a global IT system spanning six countries and three continents. Through technology and back-end systems, it aims to provide employees with a consistent environment wherever they work. Since adopting IFS in 2016, Cimcorp has already unified information from disparate locations, reduced unnecessary work, and improved decision-making through real-time access to information. The move to IFS Cloud affirms the company’s desire to continue leveraging key industry insights and best practices through a successful IT partnership.

“Aiming for global consistency is an important part of our vision for the business. Any IT infrastructure relying on multiple systems creates complexity, which can translate into costly and strategically dangerous delays by constraining our ability to make business change. The simplification afforded by IFS Cloud lets us focus on delivering value and the best possible service to our customers.”
—Pekka Nurmi, Director of Corporate IT, Cimcorp

Outcome-Based IT

Nurmi emphasizes the need to move away from transactional IT relationships toward partnerships that deliver outcomes.

“Compared to a decade ago, IT teams today have shifted from focusing on the criticality of internal execution to the criticality of delivering against the business strategy. IT is a key enabler for innovation and competitive advantage. We know we cannot invent everything in-house, so we select and trust expert partners like IFS. For Cimcorp, this means leveraging our IT and data assets with IFS Cloud so we can work smarter, not harder.”

Maintaining a strategic focus for the company is also a priority for Tommi Kumlander, Cimcorp’s Chief Financial Officer.

“We need accurate and up-to-date data always available in a cost-effective way. IFS Cloud helps us to identify business opportunities, save costs, and reduce the risks related to our system environment. We’re enabling our core business to benefit more from the digitalization trend while providing a better customer experience.”

The Solution: IFS Cloud Implementation

The move to IFS Cloud enables the company to develop and deliver new value-added customer services — a powerful differentiator in an increasingly competitive market. A customer portal provides Cimcorp customers with instant prices, shortening and streamlining the purchasing process and helping to reduce delivery times.

“Looking ahead, the ability to see detailed, real-time information about system performance and status will let us predict potential issues and plan preventive actions. We want to be able to give customers more statistics regarding their equipment and usage to help maximize system uptime. Augmented reality solutions can also significantly accelerate and improve fault-finding and diagnostics, allowing us to remotely assist on-site personnel in their operations.”
—Tommi Kumlander, CFO, Cimcorp

Innovation Out of the Box

Transformational technologies within IFS Cloud are ready to use ​‘out of the box,’ allowing immediate business value delivery.

“We’re now looking at technologies such as IoT, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and digital twins, and ways we can utilize them more and more in our operations.”

Cimcorp’s automatic material handling systems generate large amounts of data, making analytics a key focus area.

“IFS Cloud gives us the opportunity to link data and analytics from different customers and different sites to the assets already existing in our ERP. We will have centralized, easy access to all data and analytics, enabling better tools for ourselves and opportunities to create better services for our customers.”

The Results: Implementation Benefits with IFS Cloud ERP

Benefits of Using IFS Cloud

• Multi-site information held in a single system
• Reduced workload, saving time and cost
• Real-time data informing better decision-making
• Digital transformation and technologies built-in
• Desired business functionality without software customization
• Evergreen platform with IFS Cloud
• Tablet or smartphone access to all applications and data
• Support for innovation and new services

Shunning Customization

IFS’s approach of developing powerful functionality as standard within IFS Cloud resonates particularly well with Cimcorp.

“We’ve seen that IFS Cloud simply works ​‘as is’ for the business processes we need. I see other companies paying for costly ERP modifications, only to remove most of them after two or three years because they weren’t needed. With no need to modify the core, IFS Cloud gives us a cost-effective and evergreen platform.”

The Moment of Service™

Nurmi believes strongly in the IFS mission to help companies master their moment of service.

“Customers use the automation systems we design for years, even decades. The more insights we can learn from accurate, real-time data across the lifecycle, the more we can help our customers with improvements and innovative new solutions and services. IFS Cloud gives us the big picture to develop and deliver the turnkey automation and productive uptime our customers need now and in the years to come.”

“It is a key enabler for innovation and competitive advantage. By leveraging our IT and data assets with IFS Cloud, we can work smarter, not harder.” —Pekka Nurmi, Director of Corporate IT, Cimcorp