Diminishing errors and integrating seamlessly with SAP to deliver nine applications in one year

Uniting disparate solutions via low-code development

Over the last 75 years, Bolzoni, a leading global manufacturer of lift truck attachments and material-handling equipment, has partially expanded their global footprint by acquiring smaller, local companies. With each acquisition, the company must adapt a new set of information technology (IT) systems and processes to fit the organization. Thus, Bolzoni’s organizational strategy has become more complex.

“Historically, our products have been mechanical products, which we sold directly to forklift manufacturers or end-users,” says Pietro Foroni, quality and engineering technical director at Bolzoni. “Now, we are entering a new business phase in which sensors, controls, software and I/O connectors are becoming increasingly important in linking products together as unique solutions for our customers.”

In this new phase, Bolzoni needed a software delivery platform that could flexibly handle their integration and connectivity requirements. In late 2022, they adopted the Mendix™ Low-code platform to align their record systems across the product lifecycle and integrate with SAP and Teamcenter® software. Mendix and Teamcenter are part of the Siemens Xcelerator business platform of software, hardware and services.

Overcoming strategic alignment and integration challenges

As Bolzoni expanded their business in the U.S., China and Brazil, each new plant came with its own processes, technology and particularities.

“About 20 years ago, we started aligning all of the processes in the engineering department,” says Foroni. “We realized that the strategy is important. But what is critical are two things: the people and the tool.”

That is where Stefano Terzoni, IT director at Bolzoni, comes in. His team’s strategic purview focuses on IT systems, cybersecurity and IT innovation. “For us, it became important to have a tool that could integrate our core systems and increase our innovation, and we needed this to be the same tool,” says Terzoni.

Over the last two decades, Bolzoni has consolidated their technology stack to three core systems for their main business processes: Teamcenter for product development, SAP for operations and Salesforce for customer relationship management.

Bolzoni looked at the options within the core system’s landscape, and after reviewing the options, settled on the Mendix low-code development platform.

“We wanted to automate our core processes while still keeping the core clean,” says Terzoni. “We evaluated another solution, but we realized it was not as simple for our team members to learn as a low-code or no-code platform. We also saw that a low-code platform could significantly reduce our development time, which would help us address the challenge of shadow IT.”

While increasing development and developer uptake were points for Mendix, Bolzoni had to look critically at the platform’s compatibility with SAP.

“We discovered quite quickly that integrating SAP with Mendix is extremely simple,” says Terzoni. “And of course, we knew Mendix would integrate easily with Teamcenter.”

Benefiting from teamwork and partnerships

To establish a low-code development team, Bolzoni started with two developers and teamed up with Netribe, a Siemens Digital Industries Software and expert implementation partner.

By partnering with Netribe, the Bolzoni team codeveloped alongside experts, expedited the delivery of early projects and laid the foundation for a more self-sufficient future.

“This was my first experience with a low-code environment,” says Marco Marchesi, engineering systems specialist and one of the first at Bolzoni to start using Mendix. “I always developed with Java or C# before. I went to the Mendix Academy and started with the basic course and moved up to the advanced. We were experimenting with projects before we selected Mendix. Once we kicked off our first project with Netribe, we set up the basics. They taught us about entities and how to implement things like single sign-on. From there we learned by practicing on our own.”

The Netribe team also shared their knowledge on leveraging standard, reusable building blocks from the Mendix Marketplace. These components and functionalities are professionally maintained, further reducing the burden on Bolzoni’s lean development team over time. Additionally, Netribe supported Bolzoni in establishing reusable user interface (UI) components and leveraging prebuilt connectors to SAP, Teamcenter and Amazon Warehouse Services (AWS) to expedite development.

“The first time I created the OData service and tried the connection with Mendix, I was able to see the information from SAP in Mendix,” says Federico Balestrieri, SAP technical specialist and second Mendix developer at Bolzoni. “It was a good moment.”

By leveraging mechanisms to accelerate the software development lifecycle, the way Bolzoni tests and learns as new ideas arise changes.

“Low code allows us to develop in a short time,” says Terzoni. “During the innovation process, we need to consider failures. This is normal and will happen. If we’ve only taken a few days to develop a solution with Mendix instead of a few weeks or months, we can accept those failures in a different way and move on quickly to see what else might work. For us, Mendix is the best solution for innovation.”

Achieving transparent quality management

Using Mendix, Bolzoni’s goal was to shorten the distance between their people, processes and core systems. With vast amounts of information existing in Teamcenter and SAP, shop floor employees did not always have the right interface to access these systems properly.

However, by using Mendix, their team delivered nine applications to date. They created apps that digitized shop floor processes, which reduced manual work and improved product quality. Additionally, these applications provided greater transparency and enabled data-driven decision making and streamlined innovation since they are flexible in nature and native developers can leverage the vast ecosystem of Mendix services and connectors for other valuable systems.

The business-critical process of quality checks was historically manual and paper-based for Bolzoni. Shop floor operators would record the checks on paper, scan the document and then upload it to their enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.

Bolzoni’s first Mendix project was developing their quality endline checklist application. The application was developed in just two weeks and went live in early 2023. Today, the company uses it on the shop floor in Italy and will roll it out globally to all shop floor operators in the next few years.

The application is accessible on a tablet, where shop floor operators scan the product’s barcode for initial verification. They can then populate the necessary information, such as the quality of the welding or oil calibration, which is automatically reflects in the SAP Quality Management (QM) module.

“Our process for aligning record systems across the product lifecycle is now digitalized with Mendix, and it is completely integrated with SAP QM, which was very important for us,” says Terzoni.

Digitizing the experience in Mendix also affords the team greater flexibility to adjust as processes evolve over time. “We made the application in a way that, when we add new controls on SAP, the list the operator has to complete is dynamic based on the attachment,” adds Balestrieri.

The team is experimenting with integrating artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities via prebuilt AWS connectors from the Mendix Marketplace.

“The biggest advantage of the quality endline checklist application isn’t just removing the paper and manual activity,” says Foroni. “If a check fails, the product cannot move to the next step until we resolve that failure.

“Now the company has data we can analyze and make decisions with. We have greater traceability of all failures. We are in the process of developing a new Mendix application that will compare the failure data across departments. This will help us be more proactive in identifying areas of improvement for our shop floor processes.”

Enabling process innovation

Another paper process Bolzoni quickly addressed was collecting delivery notes and signatures. Initially, the company tasked another developer with creating a solution, but there were challenges at the point of signature.

“After testing this out for two weeks, we decided to shift the process to Mendix. In less than a week, we rebuilt the application,” says Terzoni.

In the new delivery app, operators select the shipping method and then sign off. The system archives their signature in SAP and an external legal archive.

To centralize systems and processes, Bolzoni developed an innovation portal, which is a central gateway to any innovation-related applications that the IT team delivers, including all their Mendix solutions.

“For us, it is important to associate this portal with innovation,” says Terzoni. “For Bolzoni, using Mendix means innovation.”

Creating a foundation for transformation

After implementing Mendix, the Bolzoni team is proud of the progress they have made towards becoming a more integrated and innovative organization.

“The next step is to share the development results with everyone in the company so they can see there is an advantage in using these new tools,” says Foroni. “When we have our users on the shop floor experimenting with new features, that helps us make even better solutions.

“The normal resistance you see from people is when they are not convinced that new systems will be advantageous for them. But if you can show them how the technology will simplify their life, you can win them over.”

Mendix enables Foroni and Terzoni’s areas of expertise in business needs and technological capabilities to converge into meaningful software solutions. Their partnership is making way for new ideas in other areas such as customer support, logistics and order management.

“Our strategy is to collect and integrate information in these core systems,” says Terzoni. “Using Mendix enables this in a way it is now also becoming a core system for Bolzoni.

“We managed to reduce the time to get new solutions to our users and increase efficiency. It’s also very important to have a standard way of developing where we can ensure security. With Mendix, we’ve been able to meet the strategic pillars we outlined from the start.”