Mill industry: towards enhanced resilience and innovation

Towards enhanced resilience and innovation

.The mill industry is the heart of every manufacturing cycle, turning raw materials into smaller or more usable forms that are essential to our daily lives – from classic paper mills to textile processing, from ores and minerals to steel. As global demand grows and the landscape evolves, the sector faces significant challenges, but also unprecedented opportunities for growth and innovation. delaware can help you navigate these changes and maximize the opportunities.

Download our leaflet for professionals in the mill industry

Discover key insights to the mill industry with our report, highlighting trends in resilience, innovation and sustainability. Understand how digitalization and regulatory compliance are reshaping operations and adapting to disruptions such as digital printing.

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Joris Ide: a steel future with a digital touch

Client: Joris Ide, Belgium’s leading manufacturer of steel panels, tiles and profiles
Challenge: Improve digital customer experiences and boost internal efficiency
Solution: Centralize scattered product data in a PIM, set up a B2B portal, and implement Kontent.ai headless CMS to optimize website

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Trends and battles

The mill industry is at a pivotal point, driven by powerful trends and forces. These include the following:

As the sector expands into new markets around the world, companies must navigate global trade restrictions and margin pressures. To thrive, they need to innovate and manage their portfolios strategically. How? By analyzing underperforming segments and exploring (cross-border) mergers, acquisitions, and business carve-outs.
Demand is directly impacted by economic cycles and global economic uncertainty – including geopolitical tensions. Rising raw material and energy costs are intensifying the pressure on profitability. Therefore, the mill industry must optimize production processes, reduce waste, and enhance efficiency.
The sector, which heavily relies on natural resources, faces immense pressure to reduce its environmental impact. Reducing energy and water consumption, minimizing waste and emissions, recycling and reusing product components: they are all vital to maintain a competitive edge and improve sustainability performance.
Navigating complex environmental, health, and safety regulations is both challenging and costly. And how can organizations ensure compliance while maintaining transparency across their entire value chain?

Increase revenue…

Digitalization: We help milling organizations harness the power of technology to automate processes, reduce complexities and optimize supply chains. For example, AI can help determine the best cutting technique for minimal material loss.
Revenue innovation: Through data sharing and co-innovation, milling organizations can create new products and services, and build a new collaborative ecosystem.
The customer takes center stage: Organizations can use digital help portals to boost their customer experience and offload their customer service desk at the same time. For example, configurators could help customers tweak a product during the purchasing process, so it matches their needs completely.

… while maintaining profitability

Leveraging customer feedback: Milling organizations need to focus on their customers’ needs to stand out in the market. A customer feedback process and the resulting insights can help understand market trends and improve product specifications.
Supply chain scenario planning: Several disruptive events keep uprooting the supply chain. Milling organizations need to shift to predictive maintenance and scenarios based on real-time data – not just quick fixes, but solutions through end-to-end modernization of the chain.
Smart manufacturing: Advanced technologies make it possible to update the shop floor with smart manufacturing practices. These leaner operations will help improve efficiency and meet customers’ expectations.

D4Mill

D4Mill by delaware is a digital manufacturing solution, which we built on top of a standard SAP solution. It unites 20 years’ worth of knowledge and expertise, and helps mill organizations tackle industry-related challenges to optimize processes and minimize losses.

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Unilin and delaware: a partnership for growth

By investing in innovation and technology, Unilin – a global player in flooring and insulation materials – has achieved strong growth over the past 20 years. With support from delaware, the company managed to align its IT infrastructure with evolving customer needs, laying the foundation for successful international expansion.

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Why delaware?

Here at delaware, our industry-specific knowledge spans the entire value chain. Our customers include milling organizations across various subindustries, from wood and fiber to ores and minerals. We understand their unique challenge, speak their ‘language’ and tailor our solutions to their problems. Migrating to the cloud? We can help standardize customized systems.

Moreover, our Industry 4.0 offering helps make organizations smarter beyond the use of advanced technologies. We can help them streamline processes through low-code and no-code tools, enabling quick implementation while safeguarding EU compliance and meeting sustainability standards.

Need more than tech support? delaware also offers top-quality management consulting services, guiding companies through change and ensuring sustainable, long-term success.