aPriori, a provider of product cost management software solutions, has announced that international specialist in tyre and rubber component machinery, VMI Group, has deployed aPriori Product Cost Management software to improve understanding of custom and standard machine designs costs, respond to more RFQs quickly and accurately, and secure more business at higher margins.
Headquartered in the Netherlands with sites in China and America, VMI Group designs custom engineered production systems for manufacturers that build vehicle tyres, retread existing tyres or produce other technical rubber components and products. The company’s 750 employees engineer core products such as single-stage tyre building machines for globally renowned clients, driving annual revenues of around €160 million.
The aPriori Product Cost Management Platform is said to solve real business problems by providing discrete manufacturers like VMI Group with real-time product cost visibility throughout their entire development and production process. VMI will now be able to model each of its manufacturing facilities throughout the world, including site specific material stock types, pricing, machine types and operating attributes, intelligent process routings, labour and overhead costs, and more. The aPriori system will then automatically produce highly-detailed cost assessments for VMI’s products in just seconds, allowing VMI Group to respond to more customer RFQs with greater accuracy and detail than ever before, driving higher revenues.
Gerrit van Dijk, VMI Group’s manager of cost engineering, said: “It is vital that we are able to consistently calculate the cost of customised machine designs as early and as accurately as possible so that we can turn around higher volumes of more detailed quotes in less time to maximise our revenue opportunities. Furthermore, after a quote is accepted, VMI purchases many components to build these machines. By adopting the aPriori Product Cost Management Platform, we will gain greater understanding of what parts “should cost”, thus allowing us to improve our negotiation better pricing with our suppliers for purchased parts.”
Arnaud Walburger, aPriori’s director of EMEA, said: “aPriori will help VMI Group maximise revenues, responding quickly and more accurately to RFQs by transforming its existing SolidWorks 2012 CAD models into highly detailed and accurate quote responses. Calculating the cost of customised machine designs as early and precisely as possible will immediately help VMI Group to respond to a higher volume of proposals, as well as putting the business on a far stronger footing when negotiating with vendors of raw materials and custom engineered purchased parts used in those customer engineered products. aPriori will also provide VMI with consistency in quoting over time, whichever individual is responding to RFQs, providing far greater credibility in the eyes of customers when compared to inconsistent manual quotes.”
By leveraging aPriori across its business, VMI Group will now be able to turn around RFQs for standard and complex custom parts in minutes, enabling its highly-experienced R&D tyre department, work preparation department, purchasing and estimating departments to focus on core processes and overall production strategy.
