Refresco optimizes New Product Initiative with smart workflows and real-time insights
Refresco Benelux, a global beverage producer, discovered MxBlue | SUPERP through a trade publication featuring one of our Mendix-based applications. Their goal? To streamline and scale their New Product Initiative (NPI) process. Within just 16 weeks, we delivered a fully customized low-code application that is already generating significant results.
What was the challenge?
Refresco produces soft drinks, fruit juices, and other beverages for major international brands and private labels. While they had a solid application in place for handling product launches, packaging updates, and ingredient changes, increasing complexity was creating a need for better process control, transparency, and collaboration.
Expanding operations had made the NPI process inefficient. Each change required multiple manual steps, extending timelines and reducing visibility. Refresco sought a modern, scalable, and user-friendly application that would fully digitize the process while remaining ready for future integration with SAP (S/4HANA).
What solution did we deliver?
We developed an intuitive Mendix application that reduces NPI lead time by up to 25 percent. Internally known as Straw, the solution enables structured, efficient data flow across the organization.
Straw supports different project types through dynamic workflows, configurable tasks, real-time notifications, and built-in validations. The application includes user-friendly dashboards and role-based access, ensuring each department only sees the data that matters to them.
We developed an intuitive Mendix application that reduces NPI lead time by up to 25 percent.
VApproval flows can be tailored per project type. Predefined checks help guarantee accurate and consistent data. Built-in peer reviews and QA controls support First Time Right delivery. A single source of truth centralizes all project data, and an improved audit trail ensures accountability. Users can quickly create new products and components, and export data to Excel today, or SAP tomorrow.
To support reporting and analytics, Straw sends all relevant data to Refresco’s central data warehouse. This makes it easy to pinpoint bottlenecks and drive continuous improvement through business intelligence.
Where did the complexity lie?
Designing a flexible workflow framework capable of supporting multiple project types and team-specific variations was a key challenge. Refresco also needed a solution that was scalable and SAP-ready, without sacrificing ease of use.
Another major hurdle was the large volume of data processed at each step. In the past, this slowed the process significantly. With Straw’s smart architecture, data handling now happens in seconds, not hours.
How did we make the difference?
Thanks to Mendix’s built-in workflow functionality, we accelerated development and reused components across project types. This enabled rapid deployment and ensured consistency across the platform. We went live after just eight two-week sprints.
This was Refresco’s first agile implementation, and they were enthusiastic about both the process and the results. Our blend of agile delivery, consultancy expertise, and low-code technical know-how added clear value. Refresco especially appreciated our speed, decisiveness, and dedication.
You can sense the difference across the business, there’s a feeling of relief. The app is fast and efficient. The Mendix platform gives us the agility and scalability to grow alongside our organization.
Jules Wolters – Proces- en Procedurespecialist Commercie Refresco
The result: one powerful, centralized application supporting multiple business processes. Teams now work with real-time insights, clearly defined tasks, and personalized dashboards. The number of errors has dropped, and collaboration across departments has notably improved. Where intuition once guided decisions, data now leads the way.
