Revenue Growth and More Satisfied Customers at Bifodan

Bifodan A/S, now part of Deerland Probiotics & Enzymes, produces dietary supplements and medicine. The production consists of both Bifodan’s own products and customers’ brands. After working with Novotek and implementing ROB-EX Scheduler, Bifodan has improved their credibility as supplier and realized a 20% revenue increase.

The production processes at Bifodan include mixing of ingredients according to prescriptions, production of pills or capsules, surface treatment, packing, quality control, approvement, and delivery. 

ROB-EX Scheduler provides overview of all processes, ensuring that production is scheduled so that resources and materials are utilized optimally. 

ROB-EX has made a big difference in the daily work at Bifodan. Logistics and purchasing manager Steen Christensen says: “ROB-EX gives us control of our delivery times and our reliability as supplier is top notch. It is essential in our industry. Our customers have 100% confidence that their orders are in the best hands with us and that they receive the agreed goods delivered in the agreed quality and on time. Through an effective and strict management of our activities, from order receipt to delivery, it has been possible to increase both turnover and revenue without hiring more employees. ROB-EX has a share of the credit for this.”

From order to finished product

ROB-EX is a graphical scheduling tool where the information to the production schedule can come from the ERP system. At Bifodan ROB-EX is integrated with NAV. When customer orders, production orders, and purchasing orders are set up in NAV, the relevant order information is exchanged with ROB-EX, and ROB-EX can afterwards automatically place the order in the production schedule. Changes will immediately be exchanged with NAV if the planner edits the production schedule.

There are a number of benefits related to giving relevant employees at Bifodan direct access to an updated production schedule.

• The purchasing department focuses on whether the ordered items arrive on time, so that scheduled orders can start on time.

• Optimization of planned purchasing, meaning that raw materials for production arrive as close as possible to the time of consumption. This reduces inventory levels and lowers handling costs.

• It calms things down and increases efficiency when you can take bottlenecks and other issues into account before it will affect the ongoing production in the form of sudden changes.

• Bifodan does not have to spend time discussing possible changes and delays with customers and internally in the company.

• No orders where the sales department promises a delivery time that Bifodan cannot comply with. In the production schedule employees can see what consequences a rush order will have.

• The workload graph in ROB-EX gives the sales department an opportunity quickly to see when there is capacity available to take in new orders.

Bifodan meets delivery times on 98% of orders after implementing ROB-EX. Before it was around 82% of orders that were delivered on time. Now Bifodan has more credibility as a supplier, and they have also increased satisfaction among both customers and employees. Moreover, better scheduling of production has contributed to a 20% increase in turnover.

Download Bifodan's story.

Novotek is the leading creator of innovative solutions for Automation and Industrial IT in the Nordic countries, Benelux, Switzerland, United Kingdom and Ireland. The foundation is a portfolio of great products from among others GE and Kepware. With a team of highly dedicated solution architects, we are able to deliver solutions that makes it possible for our customers to stay ahead with competition.