The company, Zastava Tapacirnica Serbia, is
an automotive supplier with a tradition of over 150 years.
The company was once a part of Zastava Automotive a.d. which
was bought by Fiat a few years ago. Zastava Tapacirnica was
one of the daughter companies which was sold off. In a struggle
to survive, the company soon became aware that they had to
learn fast and from the best!
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Today, the proof of success is that they supply to the
leading suppliers of automotive interiors and their final
products are found in a range of automotive brands, like
Opel, Renault, Peugeot, VW, SEAT, and BMW.
To meet the highest industry standards they also built a new 8000 m2 facility,
which is just 1 km away from the Fiat Serbia main assembly plant. |
The Challenge
Until 2007, Zastava Tapacirnica was a sub-supplier of JCI
- NTU Slovenia. With a desire to evolve, the company set
ambitious
goals:
- To become JCI’s “Full
Service Supplier”
- To become a global A-class supplier
- To get new customers – within
JCI, and others
- To
achieve better business results
- To achieve steady and permanent growth
The Result
All the goals are met!
- Full Service Supplier – from
June, 2008
- A-Class Supplier – de facto from 2009, formally from
June, 2010 – audited by JCI
- Signed contracts with a significant number of
new customers
- Business results are good, and economic crisis
left relatively few scars
- The growth of the company is permanent and
stable
The Road to Success
Doing business with the global automotive suppliers demands
a certain business etiquette. Without it, you may become
a supplier, but in case of low demand, you can easily be
dropped. Some of the musts in this etiquette are the use
of a good ERP system, EDI and bar-coding.
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To implement these systems, Zastava Tapacirnica signed
an implementation agreement with the Slovenian company
M2M Information Systems. It was M2M who recommended they
follow the best business practices described in the Global
MMOG/Logistics Evaluation tool, during and after the implementation,
regardless of whether their customers explicitly request
it or not. |
The Head of Logistics and the ERP implementation
sponsor, Mr. Dragoljub Rejman, embraced MMOG/LE immediately,
and so it became
the main reference whenever we had to verify our ideas or
process design during implementation.
All relevant processes in Zastava Tapacirnica were implemented
with respect to MMOG/LE requests:
-
Customer orders and forecasts are received using EDI system
and automatically transferred to the ERP/Planning system.
- Capacity planning.
- Material tracking and labelling.
- Ensuring Accurate Data in ASN.
- Sub-Supplier Communication.
All processes are designed and documented using process flow
diagrams as a standard interface of the ERP system in use – QAD
Enterprise Applications.
Besides being a more reliable supply chain partner and achieving
better business results, the company reports many other benefits.
For example, night shifts are no longer necessary to keep up
with demand, and employees are more confident and better trained
in their daily tasks – to mention just a few.
The company CEO, Mr. Dejan Dragutinovic, is very satisfied
with the good business results, mostly achieved by respecting
the best business practices described in the Global MMOG/LE.
Being also a very good host, he often shares his experience
on different occasions – company visits, or Serbian Automotive
Cluster meetings. If asked for advice by his colleagues from
other Serbian automotive suppliers, he suggests: "Don't
wait for customers to force you to use good business practices – start
now, and the rewards will come!"
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