Rilievi Group company has successfully completed the implementation of Microsoft Dynamics AX, complemented by PORINI Apparel & Textile for AX, the vertical solution for the fashion industry provided by PORINI. The project has been carried out with  the support of the partner PA Expertise.

Rilievi Group is a leader company in the high quality hand embroidery for the fashion & luxury Sector. It is a medium size company that combines the flexibility and creativity of an artisanal company with the features and the complexity of a multinational manufacturing one.

Some of the goals of the project were: to have an integrated management throughout the Group for what concerns the manufacturing process with tracking of the data as soon as these were generated; to support a high value customer care service; to differentiate the business by the addition of a new line of branded clothes.

The solution has allowed the company to increase the number of processes managed by putting in connection production and business areas in Italy, India and USA and also to enable new needs of the supply chain (certification, traceability).

The selection of Dynamics AX and Porini has been driven by the requirements that pointed out the need for an international and scalable solution, with an embedded verticalization for the Fashion industry, with a native integration with the accounting systems in order to facilitate management control and consolidations. The system integrator (PA Expertise) should have guaranteed professionalism and reliability.

The project intervention areas have been: active cycle, passive cycle, manufacturing, accounting and finance, individual productivity (Office 365), product development ( JUST PLM has been implemented and integrated with AX and Porini), collaboration ( Microsoft Sharepoint Platform has been implemented for sharing projects, documents and certifications).

Some of the positive effects of the new systems are: a new intercompany and multi-country information system without the duplication of information and without multiple data entry activities among the five companies located in three different continents; the real-time sharing of technical information through the group PLM (company’s BOM and aggregate, routes by companies, manufacturing specs, images); the costing quote for each product at company and corporate level; the homogenization of the management reporting with a rapid consolidation of data.

Moreover: the real-time transfer of customers’ input into web-based projects management, accompanied by images, references and links to internal management data (articles, seasons, customers, etc.); the collaboration among departments and among companies on product developments projects, using social tools (feed, news, tags); connecting projects to derivative products, with quick access to input information, and to the whole path followed in the development; search for tags and keywords in the projects files in order to find ideas for new developments or to support the customer in his researches; in perspective, the possibility to enable customers’ access customers to their projects.

Michele Galliano, Managing Director of Rilievi Group, recalls the main challenges, great opportunities and success factors related to this project:

“Some of the main challenges have been: to manage the project and all the related go-lives of the various areas in a rather short time and without a specific internal IT support; to manage cultural differences between the various companies in the adoption of new IT procedures; reconcile the timing of the project with those typical of the fashion business. But these challenges were also related to important opportunities: improving overall business efficiency; the ability to integrate upstream and downstream of the supply chain; a scalable system that would allow the company to easily adjust to new setups and to new businesses. The project’s success is the result of some factors that can be summarized as follows: strong sponsorship from the top management of Rilievi, the partner’s ability to shape and adapt the software solutions to meet our requirements; vertical solutions (Porini and JUST PLM) natively integrated and with good functional out-of-the-box coverage.”