Accelerated Growth

TrustLube has been developing and producing innovative lubricating systems for the maritime, dredging, offshore, petroleum/chemical and food industries for some ten years now, a branch which, despite tough economic times, is still growing steadily. And TrustLube? It has joined this accelerated growth, not just in terms of orders, but also in the number of staff and sites. According to Chiel van Daelen, ‘We currently have some 25 TrustLube members of staff worldwide and next year, there will probably nearly 50. Since the end of last year, in addition to our head office in Oud Gastel, we have also had an Asia Pacific site in Singapore, and who knows, we may well get another new site this year. Our approach is unique and successful and more and more clients have been finding their way to TrustLube’. ‘So this is no time to slack off, but a perfect opportunity to see how we may best streamline our future expansion’ Chiel adds. 

Logical Step

At the start of 2013, TrustLube started implementing the revolutionary Microsoft Dynamics AX system, which was a logical step considering that TrustLube's objectives for growth and international expansion are to be supported by ICT. But maybe there is an even more important reason. TrustLube develops customer-specific lubricating systems which must be able to operate fully independently 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, anywhere in the world and in the most extreme conditions. Quality, innovativeness and optimal information provision are vital in this, and so it is important to support all operations in the best possible way with ICT solutions that can work together in real-time and in a fully integrated manner. ‘Not a single site or department will continue to work with its ‘own’ ICT system, but instead everyone will be connected to the central ‘TrustLube Dynamics’ system. This will benefit the information provision and efficiency of the operations’, says an ambitious Chiel van Daelen.

Clear Choice

‘We studied various ERP options but soon decided to go with Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012. This was a deliberate choice as this system demonstrates many similarities with our organisation's way of thinking and working methods’, explains Chiel van Daelen. ‘It is an all-encompassing computerisation system which due to the stream of information ensures more efficient operations. Furthermore, its modularity perfectly meets our current protocols in the areas of operations, productivity, quality, communication and information. It is a user-friendly and highly accessible system, particularly as we currently already use various Microsoft applications. Thanks to Microsoft Dynamics AX, we can tie all our applications together into a large integrated knowledge and communications network. The SharePoint option provides our engineers with one central working area within which they can easily share and manage the entire project administration including large CAD/CAM documents, where amendments and editing only require to be applied once. As a result, not only we, but our customers too, will always be informed of the correct product specifications and modifications’, Chiel explains. ‘Dynamics AX also enables us to easily control our workflow. Not only are stock levels managed automatically but purchasing is optimised and the production and assembly are planned in too. This enables us to always implement and assemble our lubricating systems at our customers’ sites ‘just in time’. We realise as no other that the continuity of business operations should never be hindered or delayed due to our interventions’.

Co-Creation during Implementation

Chiel van Daelen continues: ‘For the migration process, we went looking for a specialised partner with extensive experience in the field of Microsoft Dynamics AX. We soon ended up with SBA Business Solutions from Waalwijk, a pragmatic and flexible organisation with an above-average knowledge of ERP systems’. ‘The common ambition is huge’, Chiel says. ‘We have agreed to have the entire Dynamics AX system up and running within six months. The implementation time for such a process is normally at least 12 to 18 months. This is why we have deliberately chosen an alternative migration process based on agile scrum methodology, a method which we at TrustLube have been successfully applying for quite some time now during the development process of our innovative lubricating systems. In the migration to Microsoft Dynamics AX too, various specialists will be working together in multidisciplinary teams. During intensive knowledge sessions led by various SBA consultants, we will be determining the functionalities of various modules together, which will subsequently be efficiently implemented by the Dynamics specialists from SBA Business Solutions ready to be tested and evaluated during a subsequent session. This co-creation methodology perfectly fits TrustLube's way of thinking and working methods as an innovative engineering organisation’.