Laminates Driving effectiveness through culture Manufacturers’ Monthly gains insight from Caterina Enters, the IBP process lead for Laminex Australia, on her role within an Australian manufacturing team and what makes the business a great place to work.
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HEN Caterina Enters joined Laminex Australia as an Integrated Business Planning (IBP) process lead in July 2020, she recognised that the manufacturers’ strong leadership team and great workplace culture was responsible for driving the effectiveness of the team. This was highlighted when Laminex was awarded in the Australian Financial Review’s annual Best Places to Work in 2021 in the Manufacturing and Consumer Goods category. The great leadership team was partly what attracted Enters to join Laminex following a four-year stint at Fonterra, a renowned dairy manufacturer.
“IBP only works when you’ve got a really good leadership team,” she said. “At Laminex, it was evident right from the start when I spoke to a few people in the business that it was something the leadership team recognised they needed, and they were 100 per cent on board with getting it up and running as quickly as possible.” Established in Melbourne in 1934, Laminex Australia manufactures high-pressure laminate, compact laminate and wet-area panelling, decorated MDF used for cabinetry doors, raw particleboard and MDF in their various plants across Australia. As a subsidiary of Fletcher Building, the business has expanded over more
As IBP lead, we look 24 to 36 months forward to what our business plans are looking to be.
than 85 years to become one of the largest employers in their domain. As a senior business process improvement leader with over 15 years of experience across FMCG and industrial sectors, Enters is experienced in connecting operational execution to strategy through implementing the IBP process. In employing her, Laminex invested in a better process to help run the business. This involves implementing a forecast to guide the business’ plans. “As IBP lead, we look 24 to 36 months forward to what our business plans are looking to be,” she said. “This forecast determines if there are any gaps to the financial targets and also highlights if there is any misalignment to strategy. If we look forward and see that our production capacity is insufficient to meet our sales forecasts in 18 to 24 months’ time, do we have the time to do something about it? Probably.
Laminex was awarded as one of the Australian Financial Review’s best places to work in 2021.
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Caterina Enters, IBP process lead for Laminex Australia. Whereas if we were to see those gaps three to four months ahead of time, we wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.” Laminex has recently focused on projects improving customer experience, particularly on the digital side. “One of the things I noticed when I started was that the website really wasn’t easy to navigate,” Enters said. “You could see the sort of products that Laminex worked with but I couldn’t really figure out how, or what, I needed to purchase. Also, you didn’t really get an understanding of how many SKUs existed, because there was no product catalogue. I found it difficult to understand how product X differed from product Y. “There was a big piece of work that was done over the last couple of years to clean up our SKUs and make it a more manageable range, clearly sorted into an ABC categorisation. Inventory reduction was huge just out of that project itself.” There is further work being implemented in the supply chain part of the business around improving movement and the network it Manufacturers’ Monthly MAY 2022 23
