AZKOITIA-BASED FIRM EKINTZA HAS EMBRACED DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AS A MANAGEMENT TOOL AND FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF ITS DAILY OPERATIONS

Ekintza is a family-run business based in Azkoitia, which began its journey in 1973, over 50 years ago. Today, the team led by siblings Aner, Ainhoa, and Amaia Larrañaga is responsible for continuing the company’s legacy by focusing on continuous improvement in the turning, milling, and grinding of individual parts or short runs, which are their hallmark services. Much of their work is aimed at serving the machine tool, steel, wind, and maritime industries, with the production of gears, shafts, and rolling cylinders. However, their deep market knowledge has encouraged them to expand into precision milling with the acquisition of a five-axis machining centre.

This drive for excellence has led them to take a further step by incorporating a new element into the company’s management that is revolutionising the manufacturing world—digitalisation of the production process. New technologies are paving the way for a business ecosystem transformation, focusing on the digital interconnection of all elements and employees involved in the manufacturing process. This new model offers a global overview of the process, from receiving an order to contacting suppliers, acquiring materials, manufacturing, and delivery to the customer—all in a streamlined manner.

Ekintza embarked on its digitalisation journey in 2021. The Azkoitia-based firm already had an ERP platform to manage all its processes centrally, but it didn’t fully meet their needs. “We had the information in the ERP, but analysing the data wasn’t easy. We needed a tool that would allow us to see the process data simply, to quickly understand what we needed,” recalls Ainhoa Larrañaga. The solution came when Iraurgi Berritzen proposed that they join a digital transformation programme with the support of Digitalentu, an external consultancy that helped them throughout the transformation process, identifying the right programmes for their needs and monitoring key indicators of the company’s activities to achieve their goals. “The digitalisation process requires effort, but we’re happy because we’re seeing good results. One of our main objectives is to be a reliable company in terms of quality and delivery times. Since we don’t have our own product, each part requires its own study, and when it came to giving a delivery date, we often relied on intuition, historical data, and acquired experience. With the digitalisation process, we can access manufacturing data much more easily, which allows us to be more precise when giving quotes and to quickly and reliably establish a delivery deadline,” said Ainhoa Larrañaga.

Aner and Ainhoa were the first to train in this new model of production process analysis and management. They, in turn, had to pass this digital culture on to the rest of the company’s members, as they emphasised that the success of digitalisation depends on everyone at Ekintza, from those who receive the orders to those who manufacture the parts, being involved in the process. “We collect data on everything, and it’s important that we do so efficiently. Each machine has its own tablet where the worker must mark the stage of the process: order receipt, start of production, incidents, production end time, delivery data, and so on. This information is continuously updated, allowing us to have both a general overview of the company and a more detailed view of specific aspects, such as production time for a part, supplier delivery times, product profitability based on production time, and many other factors vital to managing the business and planning commercial strategies.”

Dynamic Planning

The digitalisation process has also led to what is known as dynamic production planning, a phase in which Ekintza is currently engaged. Dynamic planning centres on the online communication between the machines and a central computer. This connection allows the production process of a part to be tracked and the expected completion time monitored. “This information enables you to organise the workday by designing a schedule based on the expected time for each part and its current status. Once a part is indicated as finished, that notification goes to the planning system, which issues a new production order according to the established schedule. But dynamic planning also allows for simulations when an unexpected urgent order comes in. This simulation shows whether it would be possible to complete the order within the client’s deadlines, how to redistribute work between different machines in light of the change, and so on. Thanks to digitalisation, we can apply profitability criteria more clearly and easily.”

Source: Noticias de Gipuzkoa