“Every time you make a mistake, the company wastes time and money,” Vincenzo Marino.
Vincenzo Marino worked for a company that used robots on an assembly line in the automotive industry.
There he witnessed situations where workers sat idle while the plant waited for a crucial part that someone had forgotten to order.
“Every time you make a mistake, the company wastes time and money,” observes Marino.
In 1989 Marino joined unitec">Unitec, an outsourcing provider specializing in supply chain management and logistics.
The company has two offices in Europe, one in Augusta, Germany, the other in Sabaudia, Italy.
Marino, the CEO, was determined to improve the process.
Marino says his goal was to offer customers the ability to consolidate their purchases and make Unitec their sole sourcing office.
The outsourcing provider would help buyers avoid costly purchasing mistakes, consolidate purchases to save money, and simplify invoicing.
Marino started his outsourcing business with the automotive industry because that was where his expertise lay.
Now Unitec has added the printing, rubber and chemical industries to its list of clients.
The typical customer has 10,000 or more suppliers.
In 1995, to avoid the growing mountain of paper, Unitec began using an enterprise resource planning (ERP) application for its procurement activities.
Marino, who is also a programmer, personally wrote the ERP program. Unitec went paperless in 24 months. Going paperless has eliminated the need to archive old receipts or store information on microfilm, saving customers money.
