Whatever customers order - it is written on cardboard boxes with a marker. Marco, originally a programmer, looks pensively at the scribbling on the boxes. "This doesn't look right," he concludes. And: "This has to be different". But they don't yet have a computer or a printer at the office. So, Marco takes a list of label texts home every day, where he types them out on his computer and prints them on his own printer. The next day, the labels - printed and all - return to the office.
As a true fan of digitisation, it doesn't take Marco long to manage to acquire the first computer and printer in the office. And so begins the long journey of continuous digitisation and automation within PPD Instore.
Back to the future
Back in 2023, we sit at the table with a broadly smiling Marco. He is still working at PPD Instore and is indeed now a company manager. "Each time I have taken my chance to grow and take something on. I try to keep the entire process within the company running smoothly: from the calculation team to sales and the design studio. I am also responsible for the automations within our company. As a result, I was also the one responsible for choosing vPlan."
Marco Keijzers, originally a programmer, loves automations. Forty years ago, he stood at the cradle of digitising the issuing of driving licences. Not surprisingly, he loves vPlan: "vPlan has been the best choice ever for us."
Continuously developing new displays
Marco continues, "We are constantly making new displays, which means that a lot of exchange of information is necessary between different departments. Those processes have to run as smoothly as possible so that you can produce a display as quickly as possible."
Planning in Excel was no longer workable
Before vPlan, Marco used to make an overview in Excel. This recorded who had to do what. "But everything grows and grows, and I cannot do everything by myself. At some point, I had to make someone else responsible for planning. I said: this is the Excel sheet, go ahead and plan. That went well for a long time. But the work became more and more complex. More machines arrived. We wondered whether we could do what we wanted. We increasingly had to work until 11pm to get it done. It soon became clear that we needed more insight - how many people do we need for a job and how do we plan that?"
From paper bag to digital file
Until six years ago, employees at PPD printed out all papers. Marco: "We had a paper order bag and the order preparers put everything in it, in duplicate: for production and for the file. With a marker you had to write the order number next to it. The Excel sheet was physically taken to the assembly department and there it said what you had to do. But that piece of paper could already be out of date. When you think back, it is too crazy for words. It was clear to us: we need to digitise. All documents that were previously printed and put in a file are now available to everyone digitally."
Automating Excel
Marco no longer wanted to run from top to bottom with a printed Excel sheet. A programmer at heart, he came up with the idea of automating Excel. Surely that would make the planning process easier?
And so, he set to work. Marco automated repetitive operations, but it wasn't ideal. "Excel is nice, but not with more people," Marco laughs. "With a few intermediate steps, we switched to Exact Online. We use Exact mainly for calculations, invoicing and for stock management. With Exact, we can calculate more precisely how long a machine is working and how many people we need for an order. The programme then tells us how long people take to complete an order. Yet I was still not completely satisfied. I missed overview of the big picture."
Getting started with vPlan: the setup
"I first spotted vPlan at Exact Online's annual event and immediately thought: if this really works, it would be great. Naturally, I wanted to know more about that. In the beginning, I did wonder for a while how we could best set up vPlan. Fortunately, vPlan was very supportive," Marco says.
He continues, "We use phases and statuses. The statuses are very important for process progress and invoicing. Everyone can see whether an order is ready or being prepared. But before the production process starts at all, a lot happens. So, I asked myself: how do I involve the office in vPlan so that they can also see what is happening in production? Therefore, I also extended certain automations to the office and created a dashboard so that every department is actively connected. Everyone is always up to date."
Introducing vPlan within the company
Not everyone was immediately enthusiastic about letting go of the old way of working and embracing a new, digital way of working. Marco himself, as a true vPlan ambassador, had a big role in this. He explains: "We initially took vPlan to manage the production crew. But the design studio is also in between. And the DTP department. These departments indicated that there was a lot of work, but that they didn't really know from each other what they were doing and how things were going. I gave them access to the production planning board. That way, they could put the designs in the planning board and use a label to indicate the status of a design. That was actually the first step in rolling out vPlan more widely within the company."
Internal vPlan training
But how do you persuade the rest of the teams to work with vPlan?
Something Marco knew how to do: "I was so keen to convey my enthusiasm for vPlan that I put together a training course for the shop floor. Because I knew: you just must DO this. Shop floor colleagues loved their printouts. Digital, they were not so keen on that. So, I made a very simple plan board to start with and typed out a manual, complete with screenshots and a step-by-step plan."
"I pulled out the projector and said: now we are going to go through these steps together. At the time, the foremen on the shop floor could only look in vPlan.
Together we walked through the basics: you see this, and if you do this, that happens. What do you see when you open a ticket, what are labels? When you finish an order, you make the corner green. Then the order is ready. In the beginning, they found that quite difficult. And then they also had to justify their hours in Exact!", Marco laughs.
vPlan for every department
So not everyone was immediately as enthusiastic as Marco himself. "But when I showed them how you can get all the information you need from a card, vPlan was very quickly embraced. Within a ticket you can go to the corresponding file, and you can click through to Exact to account for your hours. In addition, vPlan is very accessible and visual, it appeals to everyone. Everyone can quickly and simply see: this is my name, I have to click on it. It takes no time at all to master vPlan. I haven't seen many bugs since vPlan went live. But I often get questions like: can we do this or this? Wouldn't it be better to do it this way? Colleagues don't just get enthusiastic - they also start thinking along with me. And that is great fun to see," Marco says cheerfully.
Enormous time savings
What Marco is especially happy about is the smooth communication between all departments and the enormous time savings this brings: "Thanks to the use of statuses, everyone is always up to date on the progress of an order.
As a result, we only have to meet once a week instead of every day. During this weekly meeting, we go through the processes together and explain an order if necessary. Later, we also added labels, which drastically reduced mail traffic and the number of phone calls. Thanks to labels, everyone can see more quickly how an order is doing, what has already been done, what still needs to be done, whether it can be invoiced and whether they need to pay attention to anything in particular. Most of the communication between departments is now done via vPlan."
Other benefits of vPlan for PPD Instore
What else makes Marco happy? "Besides the time savings of half an hour a day and the reduction in contact moments, I really like the overall insight. Everyone knows from front to back where an order is and what its status is. Also nice: we now only need to order a few boxes of printing paper, where we used to order pallets. The racks where we keep old files have been halved. A huge improvement," says Marco.
Tip from Marco for other production companies
"For me, vPlan is still the best move we have ever made, but you have to keep up. If you miss all the updates, developments and new automations for three months, you are really selling yourself short. New functionalities are constantly being added, making planning even more efficient. So, keeping up is important. And sometimes there is an automation that does not benefit you immediately, but maybe six months later it will. So, my tip is: stay active with vPlan yourself and request occasional meetings so that vPlan itself can look with you to see how you can optimise planning even more. Thanks to these meetings with vPlan, I'm sure I'm getting everything out of it and making daily work easier for everyone!"
Marco, thank you for your super enthusiastic and fun story!