IFS, the global cloud enterprise software company, announced that Swedish Väderstad, one of the world’s leading companies in tillage, seeding, and planting, has purchased IFS CloudTM to help drive international growth, navigate new market conditions, and better manage increasing operational complexity. Väderstad was looking for an approach that delivered a modern systems architecture, rich functionality, and a partnership-based approach. IFS, together with its IFS Cloud platform, was able to deliver all three.
Its existing setup consisting of multiple enterprise resource planning systems (ERPs) with little integration between them meant that it was difficult for Väderstad to collaborate across sites or build a platform that would enable scalability in the future, especially across the supply chain and production sites.
Implementing the IFS solution will enable Väderstad to streamline its operations. In particular, it will allow the manufacturer to replace its five existing ERP systems with a single platform based on IFS Cloud, while tapping into the solution’s service management and enterprise asset management (EAM) functionality simultaneously.
The IFS solution will also help support Väderstad’s engineering and order-to-delivery processes, as well as ongoing changes in its global supply chain. Together, all these capabilities will help drive global growth for the farm machinery business.
The agreement will ultimately see IFS Cloud implemented for 2,000 users across 18 sites and 17 countries. The roll-out will be in three main phases. The solution will first be installed across two production units in Sweden. Stage two will involve IFS installing the solution across all of Väderstad’s sales operations worldwide, numbering 16 in total. The third phase will see the solution implemented at Väderstad’s main production units in Canada and the United States.
Anders Karlsson, Vice President IT, Väderstad, said: “Working with IFS will enable us to transform the way we operate. With IFS, we will be able to replace a significant proportion of our existing infrastructure with IFS Cloud components to streamline our process delivery. If a new business need emerges today or in the future, we would be able to solve that and grow with IFS Cloud.”
Ann-Kristin Sander, Managing Director Nordics, IFS, said: “Continuously evolving their product development and staying ahead of the pack in terms of engineering capability is very important to Väderstad. We knew that we could meet their needs by combining our deep knowledge of automotive machinery and complex manufacturing with the versatility and rich functionality we can deliver through IFS Cloud.
“Our ability to partner with Väderstad at both a local and global level is also key,” added Sander. “We also have an extensive global support network which we can bring into play to address any issues that Väderstad might have at any time.”
Looking ahead, the implementation also forms the first stage of a drive to integrate more automation at Väderstad. In line with this, IFS will be providing digital twins for the installed base units of IFS Cloud as well as robotics capabilities to support the roll-out of the ERP platform.
