The ever-demanding and steadily changing consumer market poses more and more challenges to manufacturing companies. The MARION, a Polish family-owned cosmetics company that has a high reputation both domestically and internationally, faced many of them. To enable its further dynamic growth, a multi-level digital transformation was necessary. The first step leading up to it was the creation of a Digital Transformation Roadmap with a help of ImFactory specialists based on the ADMA [ADvanced MAnufacturing] methodology.
MARION Sp. z o.o. was founded in 1991 in Gdynia. The company initially specialized in the production of hair coloring paints and shampoos. In 2014, they opened a new factory with a total area of 7,000 sqm, including warehouses and on-site laboratories. This move has significantly increased their product range. Also, many quality standards were implemented, such as GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice), while the alignment of production with EU standards was confirmed by ISO certification.
Products of MARION have gained recognition in foreign markets – they are sold in over 30 countries. To acknowledge its many successes, the company has received many awards, including being honored twice with the Forbes Diamond (in 2021 and 2022), and three times with the Business Gazelle. MARION also pride oneself on British Retail Consortium, FSC CoC and Viiva certifications.
However, no one in the company intends to rest on their laurels. To meet the continuously growing demands of the competitive market, constant development is necessary, of which the digital transformation of the company is an inherent part. That is why MARION’s executive board decided to start a consultation project aimed at creating a Digitization Roadmap.
MARION warehouses. Source: MARION
What is a Roadmap?
We term a roadmap as an overall and very general outline plan designed for a large project, e.g. analytical or implementation plan. The key element of it is the specification of the strategic goal we want to achieve. The second element of the map is the description of the road leading to this goal, divided into sequentially implemented stages. By having such a map, all project participants can easily understand the vision and meaning of the project.
Simply put, a roadmap is a portfolio of tasks (sub-projects) and initiatives with all the relationships between them. Although the approach to its interpretation is open and the possibilities of its use are very wide. The map can be understood as a strategy for implementing the company’s transformation plan towards a modern factory. It can serve as a basis for a stepping stone to construction, revision or expansion of the strategy. It is often used to organize ideas and initiatives in the company, consequently transferring them into a specific set of named projects with specified priorities. The priorities themselves can be set due to various criteria: time, commitment or impact on the organization.
The roadmap describes a longer-term view
Notably, the maps, by virtue of the number of initiatives, their scale and timing are covering a longer time horizon – mostly about 3 to 7 years. Such a long perspective and a prioritization causes a natural selection and shift of projects and initiatives on the timeline. The roadmap cannot be treated thus as a fixed creation. The key to effective use of the roadmap is that it should live within the organization and be revised accordingly to the change of needs.
A typical roadmap may include the following elements:
- The current level of digital maturity of the company – where are we now?
- The main business goal of digital transformation – where do we want to be and why?
- List of initiatives (projects) supporting the achievement of the overarching goal – how do we want to do this?
- Business goals for each initiative – which initiatives to pursue?
- Relationships schema between initiatives.
- Pain – gain analysis of a set of initiatives.
Effects of Pain – Gain analysis which were proposed to MARION. Source: ImFactory
Key drivers for a Digital Transformation
The digital transformation at MARION is not the goal itself. As a result, it is expected to provide significant benefits, the first of which is the increase in quality – understood both in terms of the product (simply seen as an increase in product quality) and in terms of the process (better quality of internal processes).
The second major benefit of adopting Industry 4.0 technology is to increase the efficiency of the organization, including cost effectiveness.
The third expected benefit is a productivity and process efficiency improvement, which will enable continuous increase in production volumes.
MARION Sp. z o.o. is a Polish cosmetics brand. It is an enterprise with exclusively Polish capital, belonging to the Family Firms Foundation (FFR). We have extensive experience and qualified staff, thanks to which we are able to quickly respond to the needs of demanding consumers and foreign contractors. The brand includes products such as body, hair and face cosmetics.
MARION is also a private label manufacturer. It offers full support and professional service at every stage of product development, from creating a recipe, through the production and confectioning of cosmetics (professional sachet, ampoule and bottle packaging or blistering).
Krzysztof Tański – CFO, project initiator
To achieve all of the above mentioned goals, changes in the business model are necessary. The Management and the Board of Directors of the company have defined them [this changes] as follows:
- Introducing the fullest possible measurement of a processes in the organization to ensure objective knowledge and support of the company’s continuous improvement activities.
- Increasingly broader definition of standards for the functioning of the organization in all its areas, in order to ensure repeatability, quality and effectiveness of operations.
- Deeper and more efficient use of the organization’s current and new IT systems to eliminate unnecessary administration, improve communication and offer new services to the company’s clients.
- Continuous improvement of customer service processes, resolved by creating a dedicated communication platform for business partners, based on new digital technologies, replacing the current formula based on a direct contact.
- Full tracking of orders (traceability), from the moment of placing them up to the moment of physical delivery of the products to the customer.
- Digitalization of the production area, which will provide access to all necessary data for a proper preventive actions and precise valuation of each action – along with fast and precise cost information for making market decisions which should be based on facts, not hunches (so-called evidence based management – EBM).
- Automation of the production process, always implemented on the basis of business analysis and potential benefit calculations.
- Automation of warehouse processes, both in the raw materials and finished goods areas. Its goal is to reduce the total cost of maintenance and boost efficiency.
- Capability and effectiveness upgrade in sales area by ensuring transparency, as well as records of activities and premises for decisions made.
The company is growing rapidly, this applies to all spheres of the organization’s life – management, production and sales. It became necessary to create a Digital Transformation Road Map that would collect in one place all the issues related to the future development of the Company in these aspects. The Road Map, on the one hand, informs us where we are, and on the other – where we want to be and what steps we need to take to achieve this goal.
While doing a market overview, we heard a lot of good about ImFactory, which is part of the ASTOR Group. The meeting with the company’s representatives reassured us that it was a very good choice. We did not have the right staff in our ranks to deal with this topic comprehensively. The final decision was made by the Management Board based on an internal recommendation from the Plant Director and the CFO. The experiences of other companies with which we became acquainted, influenced the choice of ImFactory as a partner in this project.
Tomasz Grzenia – Plant Director, Main User in a Project
