A new business model for customized laminate flooring concepts

Sammanfattning: The laminate flooring company Pergo (Europe) AB has during the last years identified an increasing market demand for customized flooring solutions. In the autumn of 2004 Pergo had no standardized product offer and the existing administrative process was not suited to produce and deliver customized products. Experiments concerning a new décor production technique with extensive potential based on digital printing have also contributed to the need for efficient handling of information flows and décor development processes internally in the company. In the production sites there are limitations in terms of high costs of scraps and set-up times which set demands on the new customized products. In this thesis a proposal is presented that conforms both to existing production facilities as well as to the demands that is set by the market. The product offer is based on existing components from Pergo’s standard assortment. This makes it possible for the customer to get a customized product at the same time as the need for development personnel is minimized in the development process. The impact on the production regarding high costs of scraps and high set-up times will also not be significant since the customized products are partly standardized. The routine that has been used historically in the development of customized products is time ineffective and requires a lot of hands-on work from a large number of persons in the organisation. This process is today functioning outside the existing routines and process flows that is connected to the ERP-system Movex. In this thesis a new internal process is presented which is based on that the development activities connected to customized products also is handled in the ERP-system Movex.