Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R2 Rises to the Occasion for Sematic's Global Operations

To help its business grow globally, Sematic Group, a Italy-based maker of elevator components has deployed a single instance of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R2 to coordinate operations in the UK, China and Italy. It is a success story that Microsoft featured prominently in the announcement of the new release general availability due to the company's success in centralizing data and consolidating the processes of teams in vastly different locations around the world, with more global rollout still to come.

Sematic's finished products can weigh as much as 600 pounds, so fulfilling orders from its headquarters in Italy isn't practical. That means the company has to go to where its customers are. Over the years, it established production facilities and operating units around the world including Europe, India, China, North America and the UK. However, the company still had to deal with the challenges associated with maintaining a distributed manufacturing operation, company officials said.

The company had known for some time that it needed to do away with the legacy systems and separate business processes maintained by the local entities in the different countries, which made it extremely difficult to share customer or operational data among the companies.  Additionally, because Sematic's business had grown 600% in the past four years, the company understood that its continued success depended on its ability to scale effectively.  It had to ensure consistency and control of its processes in plants and operations in far-off countries because to meet its customers' needs for standard parts and design.

Sematic began to look for an ERP system to help the company integrate its data and processes into ...