Toyota and Odoo

Toyota y Odoo

==========

David Espino Gonzalez

949101

05-10-17

Toyota and Odoo

* Brief introduction of the Company (name, size (# employees and/or countries it is present, what do they do, etc.)

Toyota Industries Corporation belongs to the Toyota Handling Material in France, a branch of Toyota Group which main business is to manufacture and sell forklifts in more than 30 countries across Europe. They also import and export in Europe for some trucks that they buy from Japan, China and the US some of which they modify in their factory depending on the customer’s needs.

With about 4500 service engineers. 7500 employees among with independent distributors and dealers, TMHE is the European organization of TMHG, which is part of Toyota Industries Corporation-The global leader in materials handling equipment.

* Describe the Company’s situation before implementing the ERP or CRM solution

They built a dedicated solution for the configuration of the trucks, which are highly customizable but behind the scenes, the Italy factory wasn’t equipped with the appropriate solution to go through all the steps: booking orders and acknowledge them, organize production or purchase the right truck from the right business unit abroad and then organize shipment and invoice the customers. This configurator needed to be either replaced with a new dedicated solution or replacing it with a solution they took off the shelf. They had no ERP…

* What motivated the Company to implement this solution?

Since they had no ERP, an ERP was a potential track that they could explore. They needed a quick return in their investments so a traditional ERP wasn’t option for them. So they just had one choice: either building their own ERP or choosing a cheaper solution- an open source ERP (Odoo). The factors that entered in their decision were: the very “aggressive” market so they weren’t able to take risks with high investments, time was the second factor. They had a strong commitment from the management group in Europe to launch a solution on the configuration market between April and June 2015. After signing with Odoo and their partner Smile in Sept. 2014 THM was guaranteed for end of March 2015 to have a solution in their Data Center.

* What problems/obstacles did they encounter in the implementation process?

They had to find a cheap or free solution to their old dedicated solution. Without risking with high investments.

They also had to face a quick solution to replace the structure of the old config. Solution.

...