How Saint Gobain ended 11 years of paper on the shop floor, without writing a single line of code

How SGDN ended 11 years of paper on the shop floor, without writing a single line of code

Lennart Lindberg had never written a line of code in his life. Six days later, he'd built a production app that does more than the ERP system it runs alongside ever could.

SGDN, Saint-Gobain Distribution Norway, is part of Saint-Gobain, one of the world's leading manufacturers of construction and building materials. Founded in France in 1665, the group today employs more than 162,000 people, generates around 46.5 billion euros in annual sales, and has a manufacturing presence in 80 countries.

At their factory in Holmestrand, the SGDN team manufactures traffic signs, barrier trailers and noise screens, including mechanically variable signs that traffic control centers can flip remotely between three different displays.

“"The incredible part is that I can't write a single line of code myself. I spent six days building this entire application - something that would have cost far more and taken far longer with traditional development."”

Lennart Lindberg

Process Owner, Production, SGDN

Eleven years of paper, because the drawings had nowhere else to go.

Production at Holmestrand runs on Infor M3, but M3 was never built to hand a factory floor worker what they actually need: a drawing, fast, at the exact station where it matters. Getting a customer-specific drawing in front of the right person meant digging through the customer order line, so for eleven years, the factory kept running on paper instead.

The rest of the workflow had the same problem in a different shape. Getting a simple overview of capacity across departments meant clicking through screen after screen in M3, since the system has no real overview tool of its own. And there was no way to track the trolleys carrying finished goods through the factory at all. Staff would physically walk to the gate and look through the window, sometimes dozens of times a day, just to check whether a trolley was full and ready to ship.

Building something custom to fix all this had been considered before, and ruled out every time. A proper development project was simply too expensive to justify, and there was never a business case strong enough to get funding for it.

Drawings

Before

Buried in the order line. Getting one to the right station meant digging through M3 by hand - for eleven years!

Now

Pulled straight onto the screen at the station, connected to the document archive.

No overview of capacity

Before

A simple read on capacity meant screen after screen - M3 has no overview tool of its own.

Now

One screen, live, across every department

Trolleys

Before

Didn't exist as a concept in M3. Staff walked to the gate to check one, sometimes dozens of times a day.

Now

Free, loaded or ready to ship - tracked in their own table. No walk to the gate.

One process owner, zero code, six days.

Lennart Lindberg, process owner for production at SGDN, decided to build the tool himself in Vince App Builder. No business case. No development budget. Just an idea, after a half-hour demo at a department meeting.

The demo

A half-hour look at Vince App Builder at a department meeting is all it took to see what was possible, connected directly to M3.

Six days building

Lennart built the app himself, as a series of smaller workflows rather than one large one - so when something breaks, it's easier to find and fix.

Live on the floor

A production app for reporting, overview, planning and trolley control - running alongside M3, doing more than M3 ever could in one screen.

Six days is all it took at SGDN.

Vince App builder connects directly to Infor M3, so business users can build the tools their factory floor actually needs - no developers, no business case, no waiting!

Book a demo

Explore App Builder