Metsä Fibre

Metsä Fibre owns half a dozen sawmills in Finland that produce sawn timber for construction and other industries. Until 2015, all sawmills had their own production planning tools. Excel sheets and calculators were used frequently, and production management was mainly left for a few individuals at each sawmill.

Foreseeing production needs and planning future sales was somewhat short-sighted, and the ability to respond to changing scenarios was slow. There was an apparent need to unify both the operation models and the tools.

After preliminary evaluations and assessments, Metsä Fibre chose its development partner in the spring of 2015. “We chose Pinja’s PES-system because Pinja possesses in-depth understanding of production planning. In addition, the tool’s planning view impressed us: Pinja was the only contestant that was able to present the entire production process from logs to finished products in a single, clear view”, explains Juha Hirvasmaa, Head of Sawmill Development at Metsä Fibre.

“The client had analysed their needs in detail beforehand, which made our job a lot easier, which is not always the case”, says Antti Halonen, Solutions Architect at Pinja.

During the late 2015, we examined the roles of different systems, defined functionalities, and integrated PES into Metsä Fibre’s ERP system. The system end-users were involved in the project already in the definition phase. 

“The accuracy and transparency of planning have improved throughout the entire process from raw materials to finished products. We are also now more agile when it comes to making necessary changes”, says Juha Hirvasmaa, Head of Development at Metsä Fibre.

The project achieved to unify the operations and planning processes across all sawmills with a system that the staff at different organizational levels are equally happy to use. “The accuracy and transparency of planning have improved throughout the entire process from raw materials to finished products. We are also now more agile when it comes to making necessary changes”, says Juha Hirvasmaa. We are now able to plan ahead our production on a weekly, monthly and quarterly basis, and we are able to examine the entire sales in real time according to each sawmill or type of timber.

When the same tools are used at each sawmill, it is easy to eliminate the risk of human errors. If a worker is needed at another sawmill than where they normally work, they can now step in as substitutes without interruptions in the production.