Digital Flow to Reduce Lead Times
See how Lambrechts-Nicolaers transformed their high-variability natural-stone production with 24Flow’s real-time flow control — boosting planning accuracy, enabling multi-shift operations, and turning lead time into a competitive advantage.
Lambrechts-Nicolaers, a family-run manufacturer of natural stone and ceramic tile products, partnered with 24Flow to bring structure, visibility, and predictability to a shop floor traditionally driven by manual coordination.
The goal: reduce planning effort, eliminate bottlenecks, and give both planners and operators a clear, shared view of priorities and progress across the entire production flow.
The result: smoother coordination, higher customer satisfaction, and a production process that finally scales without additional stress.
About Lambrechts - Nicolaers
Founded in Tongeren, Belgium and rooted in strong craftsmanship, Lambrechts-Nicolaers is a specialist in natural stone and ceramic tile products for premium construction and renovation projects.
With a growing product portfolio, custom order configurations, and an expanding customer base, the company combines tradition with modern production techniques. To maintain quality and meet rising customer expectations, Lambrechts-Nicolaers needed a smarter, more scalable way to manage production after the order was created via Stone App, the company’s CPQ application.
Challenges
Before implementing 24Flow, Lambrechts-Nicolaers faced several operational challenges:
Manual planning
Once orders were created, everything downstream required manual coordination. The production manager walked the shop floor constantly to align tasks, priorities, and handovers.
Growing product variety
Variability in stone types, finishes, and custom designs made planning increasingly complex.
High dependency
Planning knowledge lived in the head of the production manager, creating pressure, stress, and vulnerability.
Reactive issue resolution
Bottlenecks were discovered too late, causing delays, misalignment, and unpredictable lead times.
Limited visibility
The office team lacked real-time status updates, resulting in customer uncertainty and unnecessary calls.
Solutions
To tackle these issues, Lambrechts-Nicolaers implemented 24Flow, a human-centric operations platform. Internally rebranded as “24Stone”, the tool digitizes and visualizes the flow of production orders, allowing the company to better manage variability in demand and complexity across the shop floor.
- Order pool management – Controls WIP, sets clear priorities, and releases the right orders at the right time, reducing lead-time variability.
- Visual planning board – A digital scheduling dashboard that lets planners adjust workloads, simulate scenarios, and eliminate manual tracking.
- Digital work instructions & Team Cockpit – Operators receive real-time, contextual guidance, improving autonomy and execution quality.
- CPQ integration – Orders configured in the company’s CPQ tool flow directly into 24Flow, ensuring a smooth transition from configuration to shop-floor execution.
- Real-time delivery updates – Customers automatically receive accurate delivery information, strengthening trust and reducing follow-up workload.
Impact
- Up to 25% faster flow – Better order grouping and controlled WIP shorten lead times.
- Quick operator adoption – Despite the dust-heavy nature of stone processing, operators quickly embraced 24Flow thanks to its clean, intuitive, and robust interface.
- Multiple shifts operations – Multiple shifts operate smoothly without constant escalations to the operations manager.
- Customer satisfaction – Automatic delivery updates and consistent timelines reduce surprises.
- Empowered teams – Operators gain clarity and autonomy, resulting in less fire-fighting and higher engagement.
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ABOUT US
24Flow is a modular manufacturing platform that empowers make-to-order manufacturers to reduce lead times and increase visibility & traceability. Inspired by lean and QRM, 24Flow controls the flow of production orders which increases visibility and results in shorter lead times, improved delivery reliability and a reduction of work-in-progress and inventory.
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