Maillecotech slashed daily data entry time and increased productivity 10% with Bonx

La Maillecotech manufactures knitwear accessories, supplying retailers (including Decathlon) with products made entirely on French soil. The company built its reputation on a conviction increasingly rare in its industry: that local craftsmanship, environmental responsibility, and a made-in-France supply chain could compete at scale.

That reputation came with real operational demands. Decathlon holds its suppliers to strict traceability and quality standards. And with production concentrated in the first half of the year and revenues driven largely by Q4, there was no room for production records that couldn't be trusted.

The challenge at La Maillecotech

We spoke with Romaric Duretz, plant director at La Maillecotech, who lamented that before choosing a manufacturing ERP, his team spent an outsized amount of time on traceability and data entry tasks. For example, operators spent nearly an hour every day manually entering production data, a time-consuming and error-prone task.

The challenge was to find a system that would relieve the staff of this unnecessary manual work while also giving them the freedom and flexibility to make process improvements and optimizations where they saw fit.

“We didn't want to impose a rigid process, but rather to co-create something operational.”

— Romaric Duretz, plant director at La Maillecotech

Why Maillecotech chose Bonx

The Maillecotech team explored in-house and do-it-yourself solutions, but quickly realized that they needed a system that was at the same time scalable, adaptable, and responsive.

To meet these challenges, La Maillecotech ultimately chose Bonx to take back control of their operations with:

• Digitized production records, which reduce the time spent by operators on administrative tasks.
• The ability to accurately measure the efficiency of each operator and each workstation for a complete, precise view of the workshop's performance.
• Operators that can now participate in the continuous improvement of the ERP, suggesting changes and adjustments based on their daily experience.

It’s worth underscoring how the Bonx team's responsiveness shaped how operators related to the system. For example, when operators flagged a need to track consumables on their industrial machines, Romaric brought it to the Bonx team and had a working solution in two days. That speed of response changed the dynamic on the floor: operators weren't just users of the ERP, they were shaping it.

“Bonx is both extremely deep and remarkably easy to customize. We adapted it precisely to our industrial processes without adding complexity. It truly fits our plant’s reality.”

— Romaric Duretz, plant director at La Maillecotech

Bonx at Maillecotech in practice

La Maillecotech’s collaboration with Bonx allows them to adapt rapidly to new developments and to maintain continuous, sustainable growth with an ERP that:

• Synchronizes and orchestrates customer and workshop information
• Structures and monitors the production process
• Provides real-time access to production data
• Automates repetitive tasks
• Ensures precise traceability of operations
• Coaches teams to maintain and improve plant performance
• Awards bonuses based on actual performance

Results and return on investment

La Maillecotech achieved results with Bonx that range from the quantitative to the qualitative, including:

• Increasing productivity by 10%, thanks to fine-tuned efficiency control and the elimination of re-keying.
• Drastically reducing data entry time, from an hour to just a few minutes (a 12x improvement in data entry time). The team reinvested this time savings in other productive tasks, improving overall workshop efficiency.
• Reducing costs thanks to reduced non-conformities, as teams can spot batch deviations in real time.
• Increasing sales by boosting customer satisfaction and repeat orders thanks to improved service and the avoidance of out-of-stock situations.

In addition, Bonx has allowed for the opening of new markets through greater responsiveness from design to finished product. In terms of compliance, Bonx allows for complete traceability of manufactured batches, enabling efficient incident management while complying with current certifications.