At a dynamic company such as Florensis, everything revolves around efficient logistic processes, from the purchase of seeds and cuttings to the production, breeding, and delivery of young plants. Having worked at Florensis for nearly 20 years, Van Zomeren has extensive experience in implementing new systems, such as an ERP system and IT integrations of acquired companies. He is currently responsible for creating a completely new sustainable application foundation using the Thinkwise Platform. With it, Florensis aims to automate greenhouse planning, which involves distributing young plants to different greenhouses and production sites.

“Breeding plants is an incredibly dynamic process,” Van Zomeren explains. “There are variable cultivation times and many other factors that influence growth. Furthermore, we also produce seeds and refine and propagate cuttings. This is not well supported in our ERP system PAT, despite this being a specialized solution for our field.”

As time went on, Florensis ended up using more and more tools such as Excel and Filemaker to support these processes and address these shortcomings. However, this has proved to be labour-intensive and error-prone, driving the need to find a sustainable alternative.

“Most ERP systems do not include a structural and efficient solution to handle the dynamics of variable cultivation times and germination figures, something that is standard in our field. In addition, there are many developments in the ornamental horticulture sector. We must be able to adapt to these developments, for example by working more efficiently and sustainably.”

An extensive selection process was initiated in collaboration with PWC. A broad range of solutions were considered, from standard software packages and customisation through to model-driven application platforms, but ultimately the decision was made to select Thinkwise. This platform not only satisfied all their functional requirements, but moreover could be put into production much faster than other solutions.

“IT changes often take far too long and are too complex and difficult,” says Van Zomeren. “This led to a lot of frustration within our organisation. Thinkwise offered us the perfect solution, model-driven platform for sustainable application development and with deep roots in the ERP sector. The unique ability of Thinkwise applications to avoid becoming technologically outdated and adapt to technological developments was the deciding factor for us. Upgrading traditional software packages typically involves significant costs for each system and can result in a temporary standstill in development during implementation.”

The cooperation started following a successful Proof of Value project, during which the Thinkwise experts took the first steps to develop the new application for greenhouse production area planning.

“The team’s ability to quickly assimilate information, understand our processes, and translate that knowledge into a solution was impressive. We were especially convinced of our decision when we saw that the platform could offer a graphical display of our greenhouses, including ‘drag and drop’ functionality. It was also a major benefit to learn that numerous Dutch manufacturing companies were already using the Thinkwise Platform. Our confidence in the platform was further strengthened by the reference visits we conducted to these companies.”

The actual implementation of the new Thinkwise application was slightly more complicated, in particular because the greenhouse production area planning process is so complex. An algorithm needed to be developed to automate the planning using large volumes of data and variables.

“Thinkwise supports artificial intelligence and machine learning. We wanted to largely automate our greenhouse production area planning using these technologies,” says Van Zomeren. “We start more than a thousand production orders every week. Currently a planner manually organises the distribution of these orders across seven different greenhouse locations. To be able to automate this greenhouse production area planning process the Thinkwise application needs millions of input records. All this data is then used by the algorithm, in combination with other factors, to produce the most efficient possible greenhouse planning. This will allow us to automate between 90 to 95 percent of the planning work.”

A smart algorithm was developed together with an AI specialist from Thinkwise. The objective was to use the knowledge that was previously in Excel spreadsheets and in the heads of our planners to extensively automate the planning process. Planners then only need to check the results and make any specific adjustments.

“An AI algorithm is somewhat of a black box,” according to Van Zomeren. “That makes it all the more important that all the data that you use is correct. This is why we put a lot of time into validating the data and the reliability of the algorithm. At first, we will run the old and the new systems in parallel to fully check the algorithm before we definitely switch over. We cannot afford mistakes during busy periods.”

With hindsight Van Zomeren admits that it was quite ambitious to first modernize the most complex business process with Thinkwise. Apart from the technical complexity, the impact for the business is also very significant. On the other hand, however, it is a highly business-critical process with which there is much to gain.

“There are high expectations,” says Van Zomeren. “A one percent improvement in greenhouse efficiency realizes cost savings in the hundreds of thousands. That has a direct impact on our net margin. We eventually hope to achieve a five to ten percent improvement. And that’s just with the greenhouse production area planning module.”

Besides this application Van Zomeren sees many more benefits:

“We have now laid the foundation for a scalable, agile and flexible application landscape. If something changes in the market or in our company we can react extremely quickly. You would never be able to do that as fast with standard systems, and that gives us a considerable competitive advantage.”

“Right from the start we had a very positive vibe with the people from Thinkwise, and that hasn’t changed one bit,” he concludes. “We are full of ideas and have high expectations for the future. It is a snowball effect. We keep seeing new opportunities for further optimisation of our processes. And for new applications that will increase our competitive advantage.”