Voortman Steel Machinery

How Voortman moved to a 100% paperless shop floor

One platform from parts production to final assembly: 20% less work preparation and 20% faster operator onboarding.

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challenges of steel machinery industry

Goal

No more paper.
One place for everything.

The result: faster onboarding, less work preparation and full traceability from parts to assembly.

What Voortman wanted

Voortman, a global leader in steel production machinery, builds CNC machines and software for steel processing. It moved parts production, module assembly and final assembly to 24Flow. The goal: no more paper, one place for everything an operator needs, and consistent real-time production data.

About Voortman

Voortman Steel Machinery, founded in 1968, builds high-end CNC machines and software for steel processing: fabrication, plate processing and offshore energy. Its range includes beam, plate and pipe processing machines and automated welding systems, run by Voortman’s own VACAM software.

Challenges

Paper, scattered apps
and slow onboarding.

Before 24Flow, Voortman dealt with five problems:

01

Fragmented tools

Paper and scattered digital tools made onboarding new operators slow.

02

IT overhead

Every separate app came with its own maintenance and infrastructure cost.

03

Hard-to-find information

Configurable products with complex BOMs and subassemblies meant digging deep for the right detail.

04

Inconsistent quality

Best practices were not built into the work, so quality depended on who did the job.

05

Communication gaps

Parallel work and specification changes sometimes led to rework or the wrong priorities.

Solution

One platform from parts
to final assembly.

Voortman chose 24Flow’s shop floor management platform, built for complex high-mix low-volume production:

One platform

Built on Salesforce, so production shares one platform with sales, service and support.

Traceability from parts to final assembly

Rolled out across parts production, module assembly and final assembly, with all data in one place.

SAP integration

Cost and order data stay in sync with SAP automatically.

Plant by plant

Plants went live one after the other, with the first going operational within three months.

Team Cockpit

Everything an operator needs, on one screen.

Operators get one screen per workstation with everything they need for the job.

  • Overview: see every task, due date and priority for the workstation.
  • Flow: track WIP and where components are downstream.
  • Information: drill down into the details of any product or component.
  • Tracking: record time and quantities accurately.
  • Drawings: zoom in and out on technical drawings.
24Flow on a laptop screen

Impact

Paperless, traceable
and faster to learn.

What changed at Voortman:
100
%

paperless shop floor at Voortman

One screen per workstation replaced paper and several older systems, from parts production to final assembly.

20%

Less work preparation: no more manual printing and paper sorting. With a 100% paperless shop floor, coordinators spend their time on work that needs them.

20%

Faster operator onboarding: one screen replaced several older systems, so new people learn the job faster. New operators are self-sufficient within their first day.

Full traceability

A complete digital record from individual part to final assembly.

Lower IT costs

One platform replaced several standalone tools, with less maintenance.

Continuous improvement

Touch and waiting times are recorded, so bottlenecks show up while they can still be fixed.
24

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