Growing visibility
For Sandvik, the engineering group, with forty thousand employees in mining, metal-cutting and material technology worldwide, a target has been set to understand the customer journey better and become a circular ecosystem by 2030.
The evolutionary process of understanding business flow and customer needs as wide and complex as Sandvik’s, begun with a close partnership with Sonat, strategically and operatively introducing transparency measures as operative control towers and order-to-delivery visibility.
Sandvik is decentralised and innovative, and the nature of the business is therefore requiring quality assurance from buying to production to storage and delivery. To improve guarantees on products and timings, a central stock facility was introduced in 2002, creating a cohesive platform for a new ecosystem of tools, machinery and services to grow out from. Four years later, a full control tower was implemented.
It is in creating ecosystem solutions, that outsourcing becomes specifically beneficial, handing over complex structures to a Sonat who performs critical and strategic business tasks while you focus on scaling innovation and business development. That is why we quickly became the reliable and unbiased middle ground for parts of Sandvik to unite around. With experience and knowledge, it was natural for us to step in and bring transparency and clarity to the Sandvik supply and distribution platform.
‘Before we gained control over the logistics, we had bad visibility into costs, weakened quality control and lacked understandings of where we could improve, says Patrik Nygren, Director Global Freight Management at Sandvik ‘Sonat’s outsourced engineers thought us how to handle our process intelligently and professionally.’
We see material circularity and qualitative customer journeys as ambitious targets that have to be nurtured with care. Providing clarity in every step, meeting expectations and sticking to targets is vital. The effect of a business wide overview trough a control tower continues to add rational as well as emotional brand values to Sandvik. While the largest gains are economical, securing correct invoicing, and improved transport planning function etc. there are tremendous leaps in customer satisfaction to be gained.
Today, Sandvik continues to grow, running with a series of Sonat implemented measures. This allows for a nimble and innovative positioning on the market, and competitive advantage, whilst reaching out to a diverse geographical ecosystem.
Sandvik has in the last two decades evolved into a world leader in commercialising new products and solutions, with a strong research and development team. Sonat’s solutions have proven scalable and continue to play a critical part at Sandvik, leaving the brand to focus on what they do best, fulfilling their goal of delivering a qualitative customer journey as well as reaching full material circularity.
