Your profitability depends on resin prices and press cycle times. In a volatile market where your capacity is underutilized, precision is your only leverage. Discover how digitalization helps you master real costs and maximize the performance of every machine.
Profitability Under Pressure
You know the harsh reality of your sector: your margins are being squeezed. On one side, there is extreme volatility in raw materials—polymer or rubber prices can fluctuate by 40% from one year to the next. On the other, there is a worrying underutilization of production capacity, which dropped to an average of 53% in the plastics industry in 2025.
Every machine downtime and every kilogram of scrapped material weighs directly on your bottom line. Add to this the demands of the circular economy, requiring you to integrate more recycled materials while guaranteeing flawless quality, and the equation becomes complex. Managing a plastics or rubber processing plant without precise, real-time data is now a major financial risk.
Why Digitalize? Cost Control and Productivity
Digitalization directly addresses your heaviest cost centers. The first is raw materials. A connected ERP allows you to manage purchasing with surgical precision by adapting safety stocks to market volatility and integrating price variations into your quotes in real-time. You no longer sell at a loss because oil prices spiked between the quote and production.
The second lever is Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE). Your injection molding machines and extruders must keep running. Predictive maintenance, powered by IoT sensors, "listens" to your machines (vibrations, hydraulic pressure) to anticipate breakdowns. You replace a worn seal or mold during planned downtime rather than in an emergency mid-run. You reduce downtime and extend the life of expensive tooling.
Finally, quality and traceability are inseparable. Digitalizing your shop floor via a MES eliminates paper and ensures that every batch of material is traced right through to the finished product. This is essential for reducing scrap, but also for proving to your clients that you comply with standards for incorporating recycled materials.
Discover Smart Quality
Smart Quality optimizes your GxP quality processes, guarantees complete traceability, and simplifies audits thanks to Odoo.
Cas Clients : Sipla et Plastics Wauters
The example of Sipla, a foam and rubber processor, is particularly telling. Their business is close to industrial craftsmanship: highly bespoke work, specific cuts, and small runs. Their challenge was determining the actual profitability of these complex orders. By collaborating with Idealis to implement Odoo, they were able to link the actual time spent by operators and the material consumed directly to billing. They found the balance between the flexibility required by their trade and the rigor of industrial management.
For their part, Plastics Wauters had to manage a dual complexity: trading (retail stores, counter sales) and manufacturing (custom cutting). We integrated all their flows into Odoo. Whether a sale happens at the store counter or via a B2B order requiring workshop cutting, stock is updated in real-time and accounting follows automatically. They gained efficiency and eliminated manual data re-entry, which was a source of errors.
Driving Your Performance: Key Indicators
To secure your margins, five indicators must be on your screen every morning. OEE, of course, to understand why a machine isn't producing at 100%. The Scrap Rate, because every discarded part is a direct loss of expensive material.
The Actual Cost Price per batch is crucial: it must include material, but also energy and actual machine time. You should also monitor your resin stock rotation to avoid tying up cash, and the compliance rate to ensure batch traceability. These KPIs allow you to move from intuitive management to data-driven decision-making.
Discover Smart Analytics
Smart Analytics integrates the best BI tools (PowerBI, Looker Studio) directly into Odoo to automate your reporting and boost your business decisions.
AI Serving Material Efficiency
Artificial Intelligence brings concrete solutions to your technical challenges. It optimizes your formulations by predicting the properties of a mixture even before physical testing, accelerating your R&D. On the lines, computer vision detects defects invisible to the naked eye (bubbles, micro-cracks) to guarantee zero-defect quality. And naturally, it makes your production tools more reliable through predictive maintenance, ensuring your presses are available when you need them.
Why Trust Idealis
We know that the plastics industry is a balancing act between mass production and technical specifics (molds, recipes). We have seen too many manufacturers struggle with rigid software that doesn't understand the concept of a "recipe" or "cycle time."
We adapt Odoo to your reality. We configure your Bills of Materials (BOMs) to manage additives and colorants. We implement batch tracking for your traceability. We connect production to accounting so you know your real margin. Sipla's experience proves it: we know how to respect your "artisanal" know-how while giving you the power of a structuring industrial tool.
Ready to shift gears?
Don't let material volatility eat away at your profits. Take control of your costs and your machines. Request your performance audit to identify your immediate productivity gains.