The challenge
Santos Bikes is renowned for its uncompromising quality and the unique ability to fully customize each bicycle down to the smallest detail. However, this high level of personalization creates a complex configuration process, with countless options that often influence one another. This regularly results in unworkable configurations, leading to customer disappointment, longer delivery times, inefficiencies in production, and increased pressure on staff. Santos was looking for a solution to better manage this complexity, streamline production, and improve the customer experience.
The solution
Together with Santos, Harborn developed De Fietsenmaker: an intuitive product configurator that guides customers and dealers step by step through the process of building a bike. The system prevents incompatible combinations and seamlessly integrates with the production process, ensuring that every configuration results in a working bicycle. This makes the decision-making process both easier and more reliable for Santos' 190 dealers and end customers.
To further support internal operations, we also developed a fully integrated production planning system and a tablet app. This application provides real-time insights for floor staff into required parts, work steps, and deadlines. It generates clear instructions and makes it easy to update the status of production. Thanks to close collaboration with Santos’ employees, the app is intuitively designed and perfectly aligned with existing workflows, significantly improving both adoption and effectiveness.
