Building a sustainable business with an ERP

An interview with Mr. Pornchai Rattanatraiyaphop, executive of Inter Profile Co., Ltd. Interviewed by the Brid team

Brid team: What business is Inter Profile in?

Mr. Pornchai: The company manufactures plastic parts. We sell a plastic solution for all applications — a factory that forms plastic by injection, extrusion, and blow moulding.

But we don’t sell plastic parts; we sell a solution. Because our vision is “Plastic solution for all applications,” we can divide our products into five groups:

The first group is packaging. The second group is crate-assembly components. The third group is LED tube covers. The fourth group is pipes, tubes, and profiles. The last group is automotive electrical appliances and acrylic products.

Brid team: How does the ERP help manage the organisation?

Mr. Pornchai: One thing we do is try to put management systems into the company, because from the day we founded it we always thought our company must be sustainable.

A sustainable company needs systems brought into it to make us grow sustainably.

We started with ISO-9000, the quality management system, and ISO-14000, environmental management.

Currently there’s another one, the international safety standard ISO-45001.

After that we implemented an ERP. These things let us enter competitions and win many national awards — for example the Outstanding Industry Award, the SME Excellent Award, or, in the environmental category, the national Outstanding Establishment for the Environment Award.

On safety, we won national safety awards for many consecutive years.

On labour welfare, we received labour-welfare awards for more than 10 consecutive years.

Even on CSR — helping society — we received the CSR Continuous Award. These things make the company grow sustainably.

So whatever we do, we have to talk about the company’s foundation, which must have management systems brought in.

Brid team: Since when has Inter Profile used PlanetOne ERP?

Mr. Pornchai: We chose to use PlanetOne back in 2011 (B.E. 2554). Now it’s 2024 (B.E. 2567) and we still use it — it’s one of the foundations for developing the organisation.

Many people may wonder why we have to spend at this level on an ERP.

A business owner may have several problems — for example, when an accountant resigns, your heart sinks, because everything depends on that one person.

When the Revenue Department comes to audit, there’s no stock to check; when we want to close the books, we can’t close them every month.

These are things we always thought about, and we considered the famous, big-brand ERPs.

Before I became the owner, ERPs had already been considered. We found that large ERPs are very good ERPs, but they wouldn’t suit us.

So a business owner who wants to bring an ERP into their organisation needs to choose an ERP that suits them.

The various complications and steps make many people give up and not continue with an ERP.

PlanetOne is one system we brought in, used, and went live with from 2011, and we use it as one weapon in continuously developing the organisation.

Brid team: How does the ERP help manage production costs?

Mr. Pornchai: We say we are a “Plastic solution for all applications.” We have a sales strategy of no minimum quantity, meaning we’ll make whatever quantity — so cost is important.

We manage costs with the ERP so we know this price can definitely be sold without making a loss. Many people might think that for small quantities you have to gouge the customer; we don’t think that way.

We use standard costing, and because we use the system to manage it, our price estimation — whether large or small quantities — means that if there’s competition, we won’t lose to anyone at any time.