Fenplast: Development of a custom manufacturing application

Fenplast is a leading player in the design, manufacturing, and installation of doors and windows. With more than 100 stores in Quebec and multiple manufacturing plants, Fenplast is in continuous expansion and is proud to be a platine member of the Canada’s Best Managed companies.

With over 35 years in the industry, what sets Fenplast apart from other door and window providers is its comprehensive integration of manufacturing processes, ranging from PVC profile extrusion to the creation of sealed units and the final assembly of doors and windows.

After completing several acquisitions, Fenplast chose Nexus Innovations as its technology partner to create a custom solution to centralize its product information management, as no off-the-shelf software on the market aligned with its unique processes.

Business Challenges

• Fenplast needed a custom solution to manage its custom manufacturing processes, which required hyper-personalization.
• The company faced scattered information across ERPs in various divisions, leading to multiple challenges:
  • Lack of synchronization between systems affecting data and information quality.
  • Heterogeneous (siloed) product information management ecosystem.
  • Existing systems with user experience challenges.
  • Ecosystem providing limited visibility into the overall offerings of the group.
  • Lack of uniformity and organization in collaboration processes among different entities in the group.

• Fenplast required a solution to centralize all its data and consolidate recipe and manufacturing process configurations within a single proprietary tool, independent of any external software.
• Fenplast also wanted to add recipe and manufacturing process definition features to its existing product configuration tool.

Technological Challenges

The main challenges in building such a solution included managing a vast amount of data and connecting and centralizing this data to seamlessly communicate with other tools in the company.

• Users:
  • Ability to create and configure production recipes.
  • System accessibility for all company collaborators.
  • The system should act as a source of technical documentation.

• Features:
  • Ensure independence of the new system for integrations with other company solutions.
  • Integrate BOM reports and manufacturing processes into the system.
  • Minimize dependencies on current manual documents.

Proposed Solution

The project team custom-built a modern solution based on Microsoft Azure cloud technologies. Instead of using an existing ERP that would have required extensive customization to meet the client's needs, custom development was the ideal choice to centralize various ERPs into one, while retaining the effective and relevant functionalities of previous solutions.

Solution Adoption

A technological solution may have incredible potential, but its effectiveness relies on user adoption. Therefore, at Nexus, we place great importance on maximizing the adoption of the solutions we develop.

To ensure the success and adoption of Fenplast's new software, the client organized demo sessions with internal teams and gathered feedback from future users, including sales representatives, installers, and inspectors.

« A passionate team, committed to delivering a high-performance, high-quality product, while implementing development best practices. »

- Lead Developer at Fenplast

« Nexus: A team of dynamic, efficient professionals focused on your needs. »

- Product Owner at Fenplast

Impact on the Organization and its People

Through the development and deployment of business technologies, Nexus aims to contribute to increasing individuals' impact in their work and their organization's performance. Here are the expected results for Fenplast:

• Reduce the time required to document and create a manufacturing recipe by 30%.
• Decrease the time to maintain the manufacturing recipe.
• Shorten the time to debug a manufacturing recipe, improving the quality and reliability of recipes, accelerating maintenance, and increasing confidence in the company's data.

Project Team

• Olivier Provost, Developer
• Antoine Bouabana, Developer
• Juan Cardenas-Medina, UI/UX Designer
• Martin Brousseau, Agile Project Manager
• Samuel Laplante, Tech Lead
• Alexandre Paolito, Tech Lead