Noyon is currently a family business run by Agata and Szymon Penczek. Transforming from a consultancy business to a steel processing services and changing its name to Noyon in 2017
“We currently have nine employees, and we hope to grow further. We do a lot of steel processing, from laser cutting to bending, turning, milling and metrology. The industry is competitive and is continually evolving with particular growth in laser cutting,” says Szymon Penczek, co-owner of the company.
When the company had to buy a new laser cutting machine, it also had to choose the right software. Two manufacturers were considered, but after consultation with experienced staff, Lantek Expert software (CAD/CAM nesting software designed to optimise and automate the programming of CNC sheet metal machines) won out, mainly because of its high functionality, ease of use and, above all, its exemplary customer approach.
After 2 years of using Lantek Expert software, it decided to extend the system with Lantek Integra software, which allows it to manage all its sales orders. The increasing number of orders, customers and parts forced it to reorganise the company structure. It separated the technical and sales departments and, at the same time, had to provide the staff with tools that would allow them to prepare quotations for customers.
"Tailoring the system to your needs takes time; you can’t do it in a week or two. We were trained at Lantek’s headquarters to use the programme, and, in our case, it took three to four months to get the system fully implemented getting quotations and working times reliable and integrated with the machine times. Just implementing the system and learning how to use it, requires conscientious and diligent work and changing certain habits. However, the result - the ease of use of the system - has definitely convinced the employees that it is worth learning and using it to its full potential.
The whole process took place in stages, with the encouragement of a Lantek representative. We were very happy with this, as it has allowed us to make the changes in our company wisely and gradually. Starting with the quotation and sales module, we added the sheet metal warehouse. Next came the detail warehouse, which allows us to produce parts for stock, followed by outsourcing for processes such as painting and galvanising - checking and testing at each stage that everything works well with our production. If we had tried to implement the full system in one go, we may have become discouraged and not used even half the functionality,” adds Szymon Penczek.
"The implementation of such a system is not only a task for the supplier. The software is very powerful but, a lot of work has to be done by the customer to understand why they are buying it, planning the implementation in partnership with the supplier to avoid disruption to production while meeting the customer’s needs. I think we have gained a lot of experience in this over the years, which is reflected in the effectiveness of our implementations," comments Damian Olszowski, Sales Manager at Lantek.
Szymon Penczek says, " Lantek’s quotation module is a major advantage, it has allowed us to create quotations for customers very quickly and reliably. Customers automatically receive order details, unit weights, net prices, general order conditions, lead time, delivery costs, traceability information and certificates.
We can track these quotations, at each stage and give them the appropriate status and see what the profitability levels are. Once ordered, we can also track production status and which parts are ready to be released to the customer. We can also analyse pricing.
Filtering by customer tells us which customers are generating the most quotations and how many orders are statistically generated from those quotations, helping us to make sales forecasts.
This was particularly noticeable over the last year, which was quite difficult for all entrepreneurs. Our customers cancelled many large orders, but fortunately these were replaced by more smaller orders. The company went from having 30 customers to 150, which required significant reorganisation. The Integra system made it possible to combine several orders into one, for example by sorting them by thickness, cutting parts from several different customers in one nested sheet, increasing efficiency.
Without the Lantek system, it would have been much more difficult for us to survive in the market during this difficult period, efficiently managing the control of many small parts in multiple operations such as laser cutting, bending and turning is very important to us. Getting accurate information about the status of each job which we can pass on to the customer, increasing their satisfaction with our service is also vital for our business.”
