​Increased competitiveness for Norwegian Topro

In collaboration with Merit, Topro has updated it’s M3 solution to version 13.2. The extensive project was finished completely in accordance to the schedule and has increased the competitiveness with the production in Gjøvik.

When you see a person with a walker, the likelihood is big that it has been manufactured in Gjøvik. The labour market company Topro is the largest industrial employer in the Gjøvik region. And since it’s start in 1966, it has more than 600000 walkers left the production facility, in addition to their products within electronics, mechanics and assistive products.

Topro has used the business system Infor M3 for several years and in 2014 they chose to upgrade from 7.1 to 13.2. The reason was to create a business system that supports the company’s ambitious goal to 2020. A requirement in the upgrade was the possibility to use mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones at the same time there was a need to organize core data and reduce the number of modifications.

The upgrade and migration process was accomplished in seven months between June 2014 and the deployment in the beginning of January 2014. The reason that the schedule could be kept the entire time was because of appropriate tools, methods, careful testing, efforts of super users as well as the excellent cooperation between Merit’s consultants and Topro’s resources. Topro wants to use M3 as much as possible without any modifications and with several improvements in their business process along the way.

Topro used Merit Step Up as a project method and Merit Migration Factory as a migration solution. Merit Step Up is based on that existing functions that should be included in the new solution and prioritize the so called “low hanging fruit”, that is the functions that are easy to implement.

Fact about Merit Step Up and Migration Factory:

Merit Step up is an upgrading methodology from Merit, where the project is defined in the phases Define, Establish, Execute and Operate. Merit Migration Factory is a complete tool for 1:1 migration from older to newer M3 versions including database and business information.

Fact about Topro:

Topro is Gjøvik’s biggest industrial company with 270 employees from 23 countries. It was founded in 1966 and is owned by municipalities, Oppland Fylke and local businesses. The company has modern production facilities with a large domestic production of own brands of tools, mechanical products and electronics. The most important markets outside of Norway is Germany, The Netherlands, USA, Japan, Korea and Australia. Topro has a subsidiary in Germany and Great Britain.