SituationSMIT TEXTILE manufactures high-tech, flexible rapier and air-jet weavingmachines for flat and terry fabric. More than a traditional Italianmanufacturer of textile machinery, SMIT is a leader in weaving machinetechnology. They have established a worldwide presence for not onlysupplying leading-edge products, but also for providing prompt andeffective post-sales support. SMIT’s product portfolio consists of four loommodels, each of which is aimed at a specific type of textile production,with the newest loom being recognized by Textile World magazine’sInnovation Award. With these models, SMIT offers total solutions forproducing both high-tech textiles such as airbags for automobiles,electronic cards, material for tires, etc., as well as high-quality clothingfabrics such as wool, cotton and silk. Within the rapier loom market, SMITwanted to improve its competitiveness with faster and more accuratequotations and product configurations.

Goal:Improve the ease and speed ofcreating accurate quotations, whilealso ensuring that accurate, clearand complete configuration data istransferred to the manufacturingprocess.

Challenge:Automate manual processes, suchas common desktop spread sheettools with no system interface.

Solution:Cincom Acquire™• Guided Selling and Product

Configurator• Quotation and Proposal

Management

Key Results:• Can now configure and print

accurate quotations in less than30 minutes

• Reduced the order-to-cash timefrom several weeks to a few days

• Significantly improved thecommunications between salessupport/technical office and salesrepresentative at customer site

• All parties involved now use thesame tool to define theconfiguration

• Reduced costs for generatingquotes by 60%

• Improved configurations to 100%accuracy

Profile in Success: SMIT TEXTILE

100% configuration accuracywith a 60% reduction in quoteexpenses!

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World Headquarters • Cincinnati, OH USA • US 1-800-2CINCOM Fax 1-513-612-2000 • International 1-513-612-2769E-mail info@cincom.com • http://www.cincom.com

Too Many Systems Meant Too ManyOpportunities for Inconsistencies

In order to configure an ordinary textile machine, SMITTEXTILE must define hundreds of specifications andoptions resulting in a limitless number of configurationpossibilities. SMIT has produced more than 2,100 textilemachines per year, each with approximately 3,000 parts ona first-level BOM, of which an average of 150 or more areselected for each machine configured. This flexibility is akey differentiator, but it has its costs.

To produce quotations, SMIT was using an Excelspreadsheet developed in-house, which allowed it tomanage fairly extensive machine specifications, but withonly a few simple configuration rules. While the prices anddiscounts were managed in Excel, quotations werecreated manually in Microsoft Word, then interfaced toSAP and other systems, which often led to pricing andconfiguration errors, not to mention maintenance. SMITrealized that it needed to decrease these errors andimprove its ability to accurately transfer “green-light”configurations/quotations to the manufacturing processes.

“More than impacting the reliability of theproduct, the Cincom Acquire Guided Sellingand Product Configurator ensures that theconfiguration is consistent and thus avoidsconstruction errors that might lead toproblems with customer satisfaction, costs,installation time, etc.”– Giampietro Rappanello, IT Manager,

SMIT TEXTILE, S.p.A.

Now, Quicker and More Accurate Quotes …SMIT chose the Cincom Acquire Guided Selling andProduct Configurator because the business rules andproperties were easy to learn, use and maintain. Also,there are no limits to the configuration applications thatSMIT can create, and the reputation of the Cincomsupport team providing top quality, professional supportwas well-known. An important result of using the CincomSolution is that SMIT has standardized the descriptions ofthe specifications and options. Using SAP item numbers toidentify the specifications allows SMIT to enter the orderin SAP quickly and accurately. Complete visibility of all thespecifications and options allows the user to see all theconfiguration possibilities of the machine, and ensuresthat the entire sales force has access to the sameinformation. Sales representatives can now create all thedifferent types of configurations, ranging from thesimplest to the most complex, and have online access tothe price list. The Cincom Acquire Quotation and ProposalManagement tools allow them to calculate discountsquickly and easily, and quotations can now be configuredand printed in less than 30 minutes – a process that usedto take weeks.

… Mean Savings in Time and CostWith the Cincom Solution, quotations are now generatedquickly and accurately, and complex pricing and discountmargin calculations are also handled very easily. Cincomsignificantly reduces the “quote-to-cash” time for allproducts ranging from new solutions to updated products.When asked about the results of using the CincomAcquire Guided Selling and Product Configurator,Giampietro Rappanello, IT Manager, responded, “Theeasy definition of the properties and rules, the easyintegration of other tools such as Word and Excel togenerate documents, the unlimited possibilities forcreating the ‘look and feel’ and the screen flow for aconfiguration session are undoubtedly the most importantfactors for our sales success. The savings in time issignificant. Cincom technology enhances thecommunications between the sales back-office and thesales representative at the customer site, mainly becauseall parties now use the same tool to define theconfiguration.”

Textile World Innovation Award

SMIT TEXTILE’s newest weavingmachines have been honoredby the prestigious “InnovationAward” presented by TextileWorld magazine to the“industry leaders that havedeveloped and are producingtechnologies that make adifference in plants around theworld.”