Mylly – Accelerator of business development for VR Group

VR Group updated its key enterprise resource planning systems with Evolver acting as an integration partner. The vision was to connect planning and control systems with a centralized service that collects information from several different sources and compiles it for use by other systems. The integration system also had operational needs and tools were created for end users. This is how Evolver’s Mylly system was born.

Olli Suolanen, VR Group’s System Development Manager, describes the importance of the system: “Mylly plays a key role for us in the planning and control of production all the time. All of our planning and control information flows between production systems through it.”

“VR managed the extensive process of modernizing its systems successfully. From an integration point of view, the whole suite of multiple ERP systems required a more independent solution than would have been used in the usual architecture of one main system,” says solution architect Otto Kataja from Evolver.

The Mylly solution integrates backend systems with each other

Connecting operational control systems to each other required a huge amount of solution planning with VR solution architects and business representatives. Many of the choices concerned several business units and Evolver’s role was to facilitate these discussions, propose implementation methods and coordinate different views.

“Evolver has played a big part in our organization in figuring out how information is processed and what the Mylly system should be able to do.” says Olli Suolanen.

The operational integration system accelerates the development of operations

The chosen solution has proven to be durable. It is easy to implement business logic and various tools and user interfaces for end users onto the integration system, which has accelerated the development of processes, because smaller changes are needed for enterprise resource planning systems. The chosen architecture supports the continuous development of processes.

“New things can be built ad hoc on top of Mylly. It is infinitely flexible. Mylly provides a buffer and offers flexibility between systems,” says Olli Suolanen.

Continuity through maintenance and further development

Mylly is a very central system in terms of the continuity of VR’s operations, and Evolver has built the maintenance, further development and production management of the application around the same core team that originally implemented the application. In addition, Evolver offers a 24/7 contact point through which, if necessary, experts who know the system in depth can take part in solving acute problems.

Continuous development is a combination of business and technical know-how

VR is constantly developing its operations. Changes in the operating environment create pressure to improve, and VR has excellent capabilities for this, both in terms of systems and its expertise. Process development often means that more advanced functionalities are introduced from different systems or that they are modified to meet changed needs. Evolver’s Mylly system, solution architects and developers support VR in these changes.

VR has only good things to say about Evolver’s business acumen and technical know-how: “The business mindset is top-notch at Evolver. And at the same time they have very strong technical know-how. We don’t have to spell everything out in detail for them to get a very good idea of what we are doing”, says Olli Suolanen.