Roima’s overall solution convinced Aliko

The trusted partner of mechanical engineering industry, Aliko Oy Ltd, has been manufacturing cutting-edge CNC-controlled metal sheet machinery for a remarkable 40 years.

Aliko’s cutting-edge machines are manufactured in Finland and delivered both domestically and around the world. The high quality of Aliko’s products and lifecycle services is reflected in the fact that some of the company’s earliest machines are still in active production use today.

Aliko had been actively looking for a new enterprise resource planning system for several years, but finding a suitable solution seemed almost impossible, as the company is a mix of project organization, traditional mechanical engineering business, and lifecycle services, covering the maintenance of machinery manufactured over decades of Aliko’s history.

Finally, just over a year ago, Aliko’s Development Manager Katja Alitalo-Kotsalo was at the Subcontracting Trade Fair when a long-term collaboration partner stopped by to say hello and happened to mention in passing how happy they were with their solution provided by Roima. That was it – Katja immediately decided to contact Roima’s professionals.

After a few phone calls and an efficient face-to-face meeting, the choice was clear: Roima’s overall solution convinced Aliko. RoimaSoftware Lean System was just the right enterprise resource planning system for Aliko’s needs, and the integrated RoimaSoftware Aton product data solution would bring the engineering data of Aliko’s own products to the company’s ERP processes.

“The systems fulfilled all the (partly challenging) requirements that we had. In addition, an important factor that affected our choice of supplier was the quality of customer service. We have only heard good things about Roima’s customer service, and we fully agree: great people, everything works, responses come quickly, and what is best – they come in an easily understandable language! Big thanks to them”, says Katja, smiling.

Roima’s overall solution improves the efficiency of the daily work at Aliko. Earlier, Aliko had to enter all engineering data manually to their ERP system. Naturally, this took much more time and was much more prone to errors than the automatic data transfer, which has now been achieved thanks to Roima’s integrated systems. At the same time, Roima’s solution was a step to the right direction to achieve better overall control and more efficient reporting. Before, Aliko had several programs for different functions, including a separate CRM system. Now, everything has been centralized into a single system, which facilitates the company’s daily work in different areas.

Due to the long lifecycle of Aliko’s products, service business has always formed an important part of the company’s operations and good customer service. The mobile functionality of Roima’s solution provides Aliko’s mobile field service engineers much needed support for their maintenance and spare parts work.

“Aliko’s technicians spend a major part of their time on the road, either installing new machines or doing service visits. Roima’s Mobile Field Engineer (MFE) tablet solution has been love at first sight. All service visit information can be updated in real time to the technician’s tablet. The supervisors can save drawings, instructions, and other relevant information concerning a service visit back at the office at any time, and the information will be immediately visible to the technicians. And the other way around: our technicians can easily save, for example, photos of the machines, and they will be immediately accessible to the people back at the office. Moreover, customers can sign service reports via the technician’s tablet, so the service visit can be immediately invoiced. This speeds up the service process quite substantially, even though at these early stages, it has naturally taken some time to learn to use the system”, explains Katja enthusiastically.

The companies worked on the project intensively throughout the spring, and after summer holidays, everything was ready for implementation, which then took place on September 2, 2019. Aliko has now been using the systems in production for a couple of months.

“We wanted to push the project forward with a tight schedule, as we have been waiting for a system changeover for so many years. However, without the flexibility of Roimians, such a tight schedule could never have been possible, and for that flexibility we are extremely grateful. Roima’s project manager was a perfect choice for us; it felt as if she had been a part of our team already for decades. Naturally, in every project, there is always something that could have been done differently (both at our company and at Roima), but as a whole, we are extremely happy with the project. Everyday work is going quite smoothly with RoimaSoftware Lean System and RoimaSoftware Aton, and the project was kept on budget, almost to the cent. The final touches will be completed soon, and after that, we are ready for Christmas”, says Katja with clear relief.

The actual implementation project is now behind, but the companies have already started discussing possible additional features.

– Katja Alitalo-Kotsalo, Development Manager, Aliko Oy Ltd.

Aliko’s strengths are innovative product development, design, and flexibility. Since 2016, the company has focused more on its core competence, namely on the product development, design, and lifecycle services of big press brakes. The company’s press brakes have a bending force of 220–4,000 tons and bending length of 3–14 meters. Every machine is designed according to the customer’s unique needs while keeping delivery times as short as possible.

Aliko’s future looks bright; the recent big investments on the product development of press brakes will secure the company’s international competitiveness against major competitors also in the future. In addition to the actual machinery, the company’s products include all press brake accessories and services, such as press break tools, CNC crowning tools, CNC control replacements, and lifecycle services.

In addition, Aliko is the official distributor the German company Messer Cutting Systems GmbH in Finland, providing cutting-edge oxyfuel, plasma and laser cutting machinery.