Yakupoğlu

Vedat Yakupoğlu
Yakupoğlu A.Ş. | Chairman of the Board of Directors

“Nebim’s experience helped us move forward in a faster and more efficient way.”

With its workforce of 1400 persons, a turnover over 100 million USD, a capacity of annual 4 million boots, and exports to more than 25 countries, Yakupoğlu Leather Industries is the biggest technical boots manufacturer of Europe. The Chairman of the Board of Directors, Vedat Yakupoğlu, mentioned their targets as they started implementing Nebim solutions: As a rapidly growing company, the operations had to be independent of persons, all departments starting from production and warehouses up to marketing and finance had to be accessible to and controllable by all relevant persons, the records in these areas had to be reported in a fast and reliable manner, and the analyses had to lead to faster managerial decisions. Yakupoğlu said that they have more than reached their aims thanks to Nebim.

Could you please talk about the history of YDS?

With its workforce of 1400 persons, a turnover over 100 million USD, a capacity of annual 4 million boots, and exports to more than 25 countries, Yakupoğlu Leather Industries is the biggest technical boots manufacturer of Europe. Yakupoğlu produces boots under the brand name YDS for the Turkish army and the police force. The company also manufactures boots for various armies in the world and is in leading position in work safety shoes. YDS provides military boots and police boots to end users at YDS shops and at their website http://www.ydsshop.com.tr/

Turkish General Staff has honored YDS with an award;

It is the first and only company from Turkey in its field in the Fortune 500 and ISO 500 lists.

It is the first and only company in its field that has been included in the “Brand/Turquality Support Program” so that it develops into a world brand.

With exports to over 25 countries, above all England, it is the company with the highest export numbers of the sector.

It is the first company to offer injection-sole military boots to Turkish soldiers, who used to wear glued-sole military boots.

It is the first company to offer polyurethane-soled, light, non-slip, sports and classic shoes and boots to the Turkish police force who used to wear shoes with leather sole.

It is the first and only company that has all EN ISO 20345-47, ISO 9001, OHSAS 18001 standards in the field of work safety shoes and manufactures accordingly.

It is the only company in its field to include a laboratory with ISO 17025 standards, accredited by SATRA & TURKAK.

In the last four years, YDS invested more than 20 million USD in Research and Development. This and the technological experience of many years let YDS be a pioneer in the boots sector all over the world. The innovations include double density rubber soles produced with direct injection system. YDS design teams in Turkey and in Italy apply innovative approaches without sacrificing functionality. The requests of the end user are always taken into consideration with regards to the innovations led by the company. Appropriate boots are produced in accordance with different needs as determined by detailed analyses and research with the aim of understanding the needs of the end user.

Is is a strategic aim of YDS to become a world brand in boots. The company moves toward its goal with determined strides. The power derived from military dynamism and technology makes the company plan motorcycle boots, hunter boots and outdoor boots in addition to military boots and police boots. In this process, the long-term philosophy of the company is “Difficult doesn’t exist” under any circumstances.

The company sponsors the TV program “Alone in Nature” and has selected its presenter, Serdar Kılıç, as the brand face. YDS continues in a determined and enthusiastic fashion in order to leave masculine and firm foot prints in different armies and different regions of the world.

In the biggest military boots purchase tender of the world based on turnover, which was issued by the British Ministry of Defense, YDS has become one of the four shortlisted companies among 47 participants from all over the world. This tender is about a contract valid for four years and the winner is expected to be announced by the end of 2011 after a long evaluation process.

What were your targets as you started implementing Nebim solutions?

Our first targets as we started implementing Nebim solutions were: As a rapidly growing company, the operations had to be independent of persons, all departments starting from production and warehouses up to marketing and finance had to be accessible to and controllable by all relevant persons, the records in these areas had to be reported in a fast and reliable manner, and the analyses had to lead to faster managerial decisions. Other than that, the inventory movements and the deliveries both within Turkey and abroad had to be done error-free and fast.

Our company is the leader in its field in Turkey regarding daily production capacity. As we sell work safety products and military products both within Turkey and abroad, it is a must that all products have to be traceable retrospectively after they have been handed over to the customer. One of our most relevant targets was to ensure retrospective traceability for all phases of production.

Also, we thought that Nebim’s experience in retail sector would let us move forward in a faster and more productive way as we had recently entered the retail sector after being active mainly in production and wholesale.

During the implementation, did you have any difficulties or any positive experiences which came as a surprise to you?

We have been actively using Nebim since 2004. Since then, we first implemented Nebim in the warehouse and production departments, then in delivery and marketing, and lastly in the finance and retail departments. During all these phases of system adaptation, we naturally exchanged a lot of ideas with Nebim. Nebim provided us with all the necessary support adequately, both in the technical sense and regarding the applications. Sometimes our company supported the improvement of Nebim’s applications with our own engineering team, and sometimes our company benefitted from the 40-year-experience of Nebim in the sector. For example, the anticipated cost of the barcode system that we planned to use in the production phase was reduced at least by a fourth as a result of intense cooperation with Nebim. This way, we created our barcode system in production with a lower cost than we had anticipated.

In your opinion, which Nebim application is the most efficient one? Could you please talk about the solution you have arrived at with the help of this application?

Among the many projects we had with Nebim, a very important and critical subject was product traceability. Thanks to the barcode system in our production departments, this has been achieved with a system that is probably unique in the whole world. Each pair of our daily production of 15.000 pairs can be traced back for all stages of production separately based on workman and time. This has provided us with speed and efficiency both in production planning and material planning. Additionally, this has become an important positive factor that we use at tenders both in Turkey and abroad.

Also, we can instantly monitor all production departments based on production line and operations, and we can obtain daily productivity reports. As a result of all this, we can accurately calculate manufacturing costs based on products and operations. In addition to that, Nebim applications direct us in the right way when it comes to retail, which is a fairly new field for our company. Especially thanks to Halogen Corporate, we can have all reports and analyses automatically delivered to the users, and fast and reliable reports can be created.

What are your plans for the upcoming periods regarding Nebim?

Our company is using Nebim actively in nearly all operations. The last phase of the project of our company is the use of the production planning module. The relevant transactions are continuing. Within the framework of this project, we plan to implement the request management module first, and then the raw materials planning, and lastly the capacity planning applications.