Van de Lande B.V.

The Company:

‍A specialized third-generation manufacturer with global reach

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Founded in 1956, Van de Lande B.V. is a third-generation family business specializing in high-quality plastic piping components. From its centralized manufacturing facility in Raamsdonksveer, Netherlands, the company produces more than 4,500 PVC and PE fittings and valves and other components for customers and system builders around the world.

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Manufacturing a broad product portfolio requires more than specialized equipment and engineering expertise. Every Van de Lande product is subject to rigorous visual and functional inspection before it leaves the factory, making quality and operational control central to the business.
As the company looked to expand its product range and take on larger customer programs, its technology environment needed to keep pace.

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“We have more than 4,500 different items in our own factory,” said Bertram van Beers, Business IT Manager at Van de Lande. “Because we have that broad range of products, we need a good ERP system that works swiftly and smoothly for my colleagues.”

The Challenge

A highly customized legacy environment was limiting agility
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Van de Lande had been using QAD for years, but its ERP environment had gradually accumulated significant customization and technical complexity.

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The company's QAD 2018 environment had become intertwined with Excel, Word, scripts, import routines and a locally managed virtualization platform. Information often had to move between different systems before reaching the people who needed it, making it harder for the business to respond quickly to changes in products, planning and warehouse operations.

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The issue was the way the system had evolved was making it increasingly difficult to change and adapt real-time. Van de Lande had effectively recreated aspects of its previous ERP environment inside QAD, carrying legacy processes and customizations forward. Over time, knowledge of how the system worked became concentrated among a small number of developers, increasing dependency on specialized technical resources.
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The infrastructure itself also consumed valuable IT capacity. Engineers spent significant time keeping the virtualization environment running, while the business was increasingly interested in using that time to improve applications and processes.

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After the move to the cloud, Van de Lande estimates that 40% of the time previously spent managing its QAD environment can now be redirected toward other priorities.

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For Van de Lande, modernization was therefore about more than replacing infrastructure. It was about removing the constraints that were preventing the business from making better use of its ERP investment.

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“We were a bit boxed in, locked in. That's what we did to ourselves. But the transition was very needed for our future goals.”
Bertram van Beers, Business IT Manager, Van de Lande

The Solution

Moving to QAD Adaptive Cloud while simplifying the ERP environment

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Van de Lande evaluated its options for the next stage of its ERP journey, including whether to remain on-premise and upgrade or take the larger step into the cloud.
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A turning point came at QAD's Champions of Manufacturing event in Brussels. Conversations with other QAD customers facing similar modernization decisions gave Bertram and his team a clearer view of what a move to the cloud could deliver. The event also helped demonstrate the
direction of QAD's product roadmap and the potential of continuous innovation.
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QAD's manufacturing expertise was another important factor. For Van de Lande, working with consultants and engineers who understood manufacturing processes meant the team could move quickly without having to explain the fundamentals of its operation.

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“The decision process, why we use the Adaptive Cloud edition of QAD is the knowledge that QAD has in manufacturing,” said van Beers. “We can work and move very fast because the engineers that we worked with know very well how the manufacturing industry is running and what is necessary”
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Van de Lande moved to QAD Adaptive, with Automated Solutions- Production Orders, Scanner, and Label Printing solutions. The implementation focused not only on migration, but also on reducing the technical debt that had accumulated around the legacy system.
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The team began with a detailed assessment of existing processes and interviewed employees across departments to understand how the business operated. Existing customizations were documented and assessed against standard QAD functionality.
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This provided an opportunity to challenge the assumption that every customization still added value.
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The result was a significant reduction in the customization footprint. Van de Lande anticipates retiring approximately 80–90% of its custom browsers, custom programs, and other legacy customization.
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The project also replaced a standalone label-printing environment with QAD Label Printing Services and introduced automated scanner-based processes.

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Change management was built into the implementation. Key users participated in conference room pilots and user acceptance testing, working through scenarios in classroom-style sessions. This gave users hands-on experience with the new functionality before the transition and helped the organization prepare for the change.

The Benefits

‍Greater visibility, less complexity and more time for the business

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The first stage of the modernization delivered an important outcome: Van de Lande could modernize its technology environment without fundamentally disrupting how the business operated.
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That continuity helped drive rapid adoption. The basic processes remained familiar to users, while the underlying environment became more standardized and easier to manage.
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Improved production visibility
One of the most important changes was the transition from Work Orders to Production Orders and improved milestone tracking. Instead of collecting information manually in Excel before management meetings, the team can now open QAD and show a real-time dashboard.
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Fewer errors in the warehouse
The new scanner and label-printing process also changed how warehouse transactions are handled.
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Previously, labels could be printed in batches before picking began. If one label was damaged or applied incorrectly, the entire batch would have to be reprinted. With the new process, operators scan the item as they pick it up and receive the required label at the point of transaction.
The immediate time saving has not yet been fully measured, but Van de Lande has seen better fault tolerance, fewer picking errors and less rework.
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Less technical overhead‍

The move to QAD Adaptive Cloud also changed the role of Van de Lande's IT team. Previously, significant effort went into maintaining the local virtualization environment and checking scripts, imports and other technical processes. With the cloud environment managed by QAD, the team can focus more of its time on business applications and improvement
projects.

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The change also reduced the dependency on legacy custom processes. Instead of maintaining multiple scripts and scheduled data-import routines, Van de Lande now relies on QAD-provided APIs and automated processes, with the team primarily monitoring whether connections remain
active.

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For a small IT team, that shift matters.

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“In a sort of way, I extend my department with the engineers of QAD and the support of QAD. So, we can do much more than we could before. We can do more with less.”
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Bertram van Beers, Business IT Manager, Van de Lande

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A platform for what comes next For Van de Lande, Stage 1 is not the destination, it is the foundation for the next phase of modernization.

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The move to QAD Adaptive Cloud has opened access to additional web functionality and new warehouse capabilities, while creating a path toward future initiatives including enhanced warehousing and ChampionAI.

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That future-readiness is one of the biggest benefits of the transformation.

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“The migration itself is not the end goal for us. It's the foundation for future innovation.”

Bertram van Beers, Business IT Manager, Van de Lande

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For Van de Lande, modernization has therefore been less about changing the ERP system for the sake of change and more about removing the barriers around it.

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The company now has a more standardized ERP environment, greater visibility into production, less infrastructure to maintain and more capacity to focus on business improvement.

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And, perhaps most importantly, it has a platform designed to evolve with the business rather
than hold it back.

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“You have to go not to focus solely on the technical aspects of the migration, but to look at what is holding your business back.”

Bertram van Beers, Business IT Manager, Van de Lande

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