Scottish insulation products manufacturer IndiNature gained control of orders, inventory, purchasing, production, and costs within a few months of implementing ERP.
Scaling up sustainable insulation manufacturing
Founded in 2016, IndiNature is a Scottish manufacturer of natural fiber insulation products. The company’s products are made using natural fibers, including UK-grown industrial hemp.
In the beginning, IndiNature’s production setup was relatively straightforward. As volumes started increasing, however, managing individual parts of the operation with spreadsheets was no longer enough.
Supply Chain Manager Nina McKeown explains, “It was all being done in Excel, and we realised that wasn’t going to work.”
Flexibility and cost tipped the scales
IndiNature evaluated several solutions while comparing the systems in terms of cost, efficiency, and flexibility. The company ultimately decided that MRPeasy offered the best combination for its requirements. With relatively little legacy data to migrate, implementation took only a couple of months.
“It was quite a quick implementation,” McKeown says.
One system for managing everything
MRPeasy is now used across much of IndiNature’s operation, with each customer order running through the system from quote to delivery. For McKeown, three areas stand out as particularly important: production tracking, control over raw material inventory, and order processing. Bringing these processes together gives the company a clearer picture of what is happening across the operation without having to manually consolidate information from different spreadsheets.
Cost tracking has also become an important part of IndiNature’s everyday use of MRPeasy. Having manufacturing, purchasing, and inventory information in a single system helps the company remain profitable.
“MRPeasy helps us keep an eye on production costs and make sure our margins are healthy,” McKeown says.
Customer service benefits from easily accessible information
The centralized order information also benefits customer service. When customers contact IndiNature about an order, the team can quickly check its status instead of looking through separate spreadsheets or asking different departments for an update.
“I can very quickly see where the order is in the system and when it’s going to be delivered,” McKeown says.
Lot tracking brings traceability to the finished product
Traceability is another part of IndiNature’s manufacturing workflow. The company uses barcodes and lot numbers to carry the relevant information from material lots through production and ultimately to product labels.
“MRPeasy provides us with end-to-end traceability,” McKeown says. “We don’t have issues very often, but if something occurs, we know exactly which batch it was.”
A system that supports a scaling company
For a scaling company like IndiNature, McKeown rates MRPeasy extremely highly for its ability to support the manufacturing operation.
“I would say MRPeasy is easily a nine or a ten,” she says. “At the level we are right now, as we scale up, it’s the perfect system.”
McKeown’s advice to other small manufacturers considering the same move is straightforward:
“Don’t be scared to use it, because it’s so easy. Take the jump. It’s worth it. Don’t wait.”
