Established over 190 years ago, family-owned Mustad is the world’s largest manufacturer of nails for horseshoes. Today, the company operates in 14 countries supplying horseshoes, nails and tools to almost 100 countries around the world.
Mustad has a colourful history of innovation that has seen the company produce a vast range of products including paperclips, margarine and even cars. With their focus now firmly on the hoofcare division, Mustad is in its 7th generation of family ownership and employs over 700 people across 14 companies globally.
Meeting customer needsTo meet the growing requests for its products, Mustad grew by acquisition, purchasing established factories and companies to support its global expansion. There was a priority to retain Mustad’s family culture, and as the organisation became bigger, some of the acquired companies operated independently under their original name.With each region having its own systems and different ways of reporting, the decision was made to implement a global ERP solution to standardise processes and provide complete visibility of the company’s data. “Our problem was that parts of the company wanted to keep their own identity and the regional requirements vary across the different entities. We wanted a global solution, but standard Dynamics 365 is too rigid as when documents are created, they will be the same for all entities. That’s why we chose to work with August Bridge,” said Erik Lokhorst, Global ERP Lead, Mustad.Prioritising complianceAugust Bridge has created over 75 documents to meet Mustad’s requirements. In countries such as Columbia and Mexico where local requirements are strict and can change quickly, the necessary changes can be made to achieve compliance without disrupting Mustad’s business activities. “Requirements for the documents are scoped, created, and users are then able to make additional requests and/or suggestions. It’s natural to require changes to optimize documents, and August Bridge provides us with that flexibility,” added Lokhorst.Operating globally poses many challenges, another of which faced by Mustad was anticipating delivery dates; especially to Australia as the products were being supplied from Europe and the US. Using the delivery days calculator within Dynamics 365 was showing when items would be back in stock and providing a delivery date. However, with so many variables in logistics and the length of time required to travel the distance to Australia, these dates from Dynamics were often too early. By introducing delivery documents with or without (depending on customer wishes) anticipated dates on, Mustad were able to update the customer with a guaranteed delivery date when one became available.
Adding optionsLokhorst said: “A solution was created for Australia that showed an overview of invoices and items in short supply. A copy of the document was made with the out-of-stock items removed. This gave the user the choice as to whether they wanted to show those items or not. In addition to this, the user can choose whether they would like to create an invoice or a packing slip, the format of the document, and its distribution method. Providing this level of flexibility is a big strength of August Bridge.”
