Majenta Solutions
Overview
Majenta Solutions provides solutions in design, engineering, manufacturing and supplier integration, including technologies such as Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), Computer Aided Design (CAD), Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) and Computer Aided Engineering (CAE). Based in the UK and with a 20-year history of success, Majenta is an independent advisor that helps its customers navigate through the complex solution offerings of leading global vendors such as BIMobject and Dassault Systèmes.
The challenge
As new technologies emerge and regulations change, a wave of disruption is overtaking industries of all kinds. For automotive manufacturers, ever‑present challenges around cost-efficiency have been joined by new ones such as electrification, autonomous vehicles, in-car connectivity, and the internet of things. The impact of changing requirements rolls down from original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to the many thousands of suppliers that manufacture vehicle components.
Michael Byrne, Digital Transformation Manager at Majenta, says: “In a just-in-time world, companies can only manufacture at the speed of their slowest supplier. An automotive OEM engaged us to optimise the product lifecycle management [PLM] stages of its supply chain—all the R&D, design and development stages that feed into manufacturing—in order to reduce costs, delays and inefficiencies.”
For automotive suppliers, new digital requirements emerge all the time. Suppliers must be onboarded to the OEM system, complete some training, deploy or upgrade some software, and so on. Previously, managing this work relied on emails, phone calls and spreadsheets, creating what the OEM called “hidden factories”. The lack of transparency and real-time status reports contributed to long delays in onboarding new suppliers and made it difficult to update existing ones on the latest standards and requirements.
To cut out inefficiencies and accelerate supply-chain processes, the OEM asked Majenta to create a digital collaboration platform for its suppliers. Majenta looked for a technology platform that was global, scalable and easy‑to‑configure for ever-changing requirements.
“We’ve cut some onboarding processes by upwards of 50%”
The solution
As a Salesforce user for more than a decade, Majenta saw that Salesforce Communities would be ideal for its new SRM solution—named “enerjyhub”.
Rhian Zielinski, Marketing Manager at Majenta, says, “Based on past experience with Salesforce, we knew we’d get great support. We can also see that many companies are investing in Salesforce skills, such that we’ll always be able to find the right resources and skills to continue our expansion.”
Michael Byrne adds: “Security was a key issue given data sensitivity. With Salesforce, the highest levels of security are built into the platform from the ground up, making it a known quantity for enterprises.”
To complement its own supply-chain expertise, Majenta needed a skilled and experienced Salesforce solution partner that could manage change during the development cycle, and that would share its vision for the long-term potential of the new SRM platform.
“As a Salesforce Platinum partner, makepositive ticked all the boxes in terms of expertise,” says Michael Byrne. “We knew makepositive had successfully completed projects similar to ours, and their team really listened to our requirements, delivering what we needed without trying to sell us something different.”
Rhian Zielinski adds: “The makepositive consultants were highly approachable and we felt right away that we could trust them. In a nutshell: they grasped what we were trying to achieve, their previous work showed integrity, and they had loads of energy!”
A major success factor for the project was makepositive’s focus on user experience and adoption. Michael Byrne says: “Given the diversity of partners in a typical automotive supply chain, we needed an intuitive interface with low training requirements. PLM systems are complex to install and run, so we wanted a platform that would make it simple to manage that activity, empowering suppliers to take control of their own destiny. The combination of Salesforce, Majenta’s supply‑chain know‑how and makepositive’s project management gave us just that.”
“makepositive and Salesforce together provide a repeatable solution”
The benefits
enerjyhub acts as a central hub for supplier engineering requirements, connecting the OEM and its processes with the entire supply chain to enable seamless collaboration. enerjyhub helps suppliers stay connected, capable, compliant and competent in the OEM’s digital engineering landscape. It also gives the OEM complete visibility of the supplier journey, encouraging suppliers to complete tasks faster and to a higher standard, and providing enormous efficiencies in time and effort on both sides.
“Effective supply chain management depends on control and visibility,” comments Michael Byrne. “Our solution keeps the supply chain ready to work, so that they can react much faster when the OEM has new requirements. We’ve cut some onboarding processes by upwards of 50 percent.”
The makepositive solution helps eliminate inefficient “hidden factories” by empowering the OEM to make its requirements immediately available to the relevant suppliers. The solution gives the suppliers a clear list of tasks, and the OEM gets real-time metrics and dashboards to monitor their activities. By improving supplier productivity and knowledge, the solution improves the consistency of work and promotes best practices, while supply-chain centralisation reduces duplicate requests for data.
“Our automotive client’s supply chain processes were previously very linear,” says Rhian Zielinski. “A supplier would be sourced for a project, then go through all of the onboarding steps with delays at every point. Now that enerjyhub is in place, suppliers are always connected efficiently. They are always upskilled to the highest levels required by the OEM, so they can be onboarded for new projects much faster.”
The OEM has seen very rapid uptake and consistently high usage figures for the solution among its suppliers. The availability of real-time data on suppliers— managed by the suppliers themselves—eliminates a large volume of administration for the OEM.
“Data quality in the supply chain is much higher thanks to enerjyhub,” says Michael Byrne. “This facilitates the root‑cause analysis of recurring issues, enabling the OEM to identify and resolve technical issues that would otherwise delay onboarding.”
enerjyhub also provides direct financial benefits for the OEM, replacing a costly service contract with a solution funded by small supplier subscription fees.
“Further down the supply chain, most of the inefficiency has already been squeezed out, leaving only marginal gains to be made,” explains Michael Byrne. “But the space we operate in—ensuring that suppliers have the right skills, systems and data quality—is relatively new ground. If we can cut the time to access a design system from eight weeks to one day, that makes a massively bigger difference to the slowest part of the product lifecycle.”
Designed as a modular solution, enerjyhub can easily be adapted by Majenta to meet the needs of other clients, even in completely different industries.
Michael Byrne concludes: “After getting our automotive client up and running, we spun off two new customers, doing most of the development work in-house. makepositive and Salesforce together provide a repeatable solution that will bring benefits across the multiple industries in which Majenta operates.”
To read the case study in full, click here.