Beyond the complexities of e-commerce: B2B Partner’s winning challenge
- Furniture Technologies
How can 24-hour delivery be guaranteed at competitive prices for customizable furniture purchased online? Czech company B2B Partner has found the answer by focusing on automation and digital integration, in close collaboration with SCM and its dealer PANAS.
B2B Partner s.r.o. is a leading manufacturer and distributor of office furniture, primarily serving the B2B market in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Germany and Austria. With a turnover reaching €100 million in 2025, around 200 employees and a production area of 5,000 square meters, the company has built its success on a clear industrial model that goes beyond traditional industry standards. We had the opportunity to gain first-hand insight into this vision during a visit to B2B Partner’s pioneering factory in Ostrava, in the easternmost part of the Czech Republic.
“At the core of our value proposition is the ability to guarantee thousands of products permanently in stock, with delivery within 24 hours, free shipping and an extended warranty of seven years,” explains co-owner and E-Business Manager Robert Recek. “These advantages are combined with competitive prices and an advanced digital approach: our customers can configure and customize their furniture directly online through our corporate webshop, or plan the whole office using advanced 3D planning tools.”
Production for stock and modular processes
To maintain such high service standards, B2B Partner has fundamentally rethought its production organization. “Our strategy is based on manufacturing finished modular components that are subsequently assembled into different final products according to the bill of materials structure,” Recek continues. “This approach allows us to maintain high stock availability, reduce production complexity and improve our responsiveness to the needs of the B2B market.”
Equally strategic was the decision to invest in automation and digital process integration to ensure long-term growth and competitiveness.
“We asked ourselves how to improve productivity, reduce operating costs and address the shortage of skilled labor,” the manager explains.
“We had to move beyond standalone machines: we needed automated production lines and digital systems capable of monitoring and optimizing the entire data flow, from order intake to production and packaging.”
Two “twin” Lean Cells for maximum flexibility
With the support of SCM and its Engineering team, the company has implemented two automated Lean Cell production lines featuring supervisory software connected to the company’s ERP and MES systems, along with robotic handling, buffering and sorting solutions. These are complemented by an automated packaging line. The entire flow is managed continuously and in an interconnected manner, minimizing human intervention, ensuring high productivity even for batch size one, and maintaining consistent quality levels. Product transport between the production area and packaging is handled by autonomous AGVs, ensuring smooth material flow and reduced manual handling.
Within each SCM Lean Cell, panels cut by a panel saw fed by an automatic storage system are transferred to a nesting cell equipped with a morbidelli x200 CNC machining center featuring automatic infeed labeling. Shaped cutting is carried out with great flexibility, while unloading is fully automated via a six-axis anthropomorphic robot that picks the nested parts and places them in the loading area of the subsequent edge banding cell. Here, a stefani cell E operates—another solution particularly suited to batch size one production—equipped with a stefani s edge bander, synonymous with high processing quality, and an automatic Pickback panel return system that further boosts efficiency.
In the subsequent drilling area, panels are processed on a morbidelli ux200 equipped with operating units that allow the panels to be machined from all six faces. Downstream of the drilling machine, another anthropomorphic robot unloads the finished parts and stores them in a 24-level sorter. This makes it possible to collect the entire output of one shift—approximately 600 panels of different sizes. Based on the composition of the furniture kits to be produced, the parts are then retrieved from storage to assemble the corresponding panel stacks.
In addition to these lines, the factory is equipped with another morbidelli ux100 drilling cell with robotic automatic loading, as well as a five-axis morbidelli p200 CNC machining centre for drilling, routing and edgebanding featuring a FlexMatic worktable to eliminate non-productive setup times.
Tangible benefits, from technology to software
The advantages of automation extend beyond technology to operational and organizational improvements.
“We chose SCM because of its ability to design and deliver fully automated production lines, including robotic integration and interconnected workflow solutions tailored to our needs,” comments Recek.
“In addition, SCM provides advanced software tools for online machine monitoring and utilization analysis, which we have recently implemented. This digital transparency allows us to react faster to incidents, improve equipment performance and organize maintenance more efficiently.”
Another key benefit is the strong local service and support network, also ensured by SCM’s dealer PANAS, “which guarantees quick assistance and reliable long-term cooperation.”
Towards even deeper integration
B2B Partner’s next developments are focused on completing the full integration of the automated production lines and the automated packaging line, including further optimization of material transport through the use of autonomous vehicles.
“We are working with SCM to implement an input robotic sorter for the packaging line. This system will enable the transport of multiple boards at once and will gradually feed the automated packaging line, significantly reducing the number of shuttle trips required between production and packaging. This will further improve material flow efficiency and overall throughput.”
Strong attention is also being paid to SCM’s digital services and software. “We have started using SCM’s MyPortal application and the digital services connected to its IoT Solution, which provide real-time online visibility of machine performance. This will help us react faster to potential issues, improve operational reliability and plan preventive maintenance more effectively.”
In January 2026, B2B Partner also connected all machines, systems and software—both from SCM and other suppliers—to WinMES, SCM’s MES-MOM (Manufacturing Execution System – Manufacturing Operations Management). This software acts as the factory’s operational command center, simplifying and fully automating the management of an extremely complex data flow such as that generated by customized e-commerce orders. “WinMES will enable us not only to monitor the efficiency of individual machines, but also to optimize production order planning and the overall manufacturing performance.”
Step by step, towards an increasingly efficient, flexible and connected factory.
