Scaling Mendix across departments at dsm-firmenich
dsm-firmenich runs Mendix in almost every department, with around 150 applications in use. That makes it one of the larger Mendix landscapes in Dutch life sciences. Getting to that point takes a good platform and a shared way of working, and dsm-firmenich has built both.
dsm-firmenich chose Mendix in 2016. Since then the landscape has grown fast, with structure keeping pace. The Orange Force has been part of that since 2023, working alongside other partners and embedding consultants in dsm-firmenich’s Digital & Tech Low-Code Chapter.
Scaling Mendix across departments
It starts by proving value in one department, then putting structure around the growth that follows. At dsm-firmenich it started in Manufacturing. A few applications took over manual work, teams saw how much faster things moved, and the rest of the business wanted in.
The company makes sustainable, science-based products for nutrition, health and beauty, organised across three businesses: Perfumery & Beauty; Taste, Texture, and Health; and Nutrition & Care. Around 21,000 people, more than 60 countries, and headquarters in both Maastricht, The Netherlands, and Basel, Switzerland. The company was formed in 2022, when Dutch business DSM merged with Swiss business Firmenich.
Their motto, “bring progress to life,” says a lot about why low-code caught on here. dsm-firmenich moves quickly by habit, always looking for faster and better ways to work across departments, in a market that keeps changing. Mendix arrived in 2016, then The Orange Force joined in 2023 alongside other partners.
Bringing structure to a growing Mendix landscape
The Low-Code Chapter standardised how people build before standardising what they build. That order is what makes everything after it easier.
The first applications focused on automation in Manufacturing. They drove a faster, more efficient workflow and also proved the added value of working with Mendix. Then came the growth.
What followed was a surge in new business ideas and a proliferation of the development of new applications across all departments. To regain control over our Mendix landscape we need to streamline the development process. That is why we focused on structure and making sure that all developers do everything the same way.
Anouke Tielens-Coenegracht, Chapter Lead of dsm-firmenich’s Digital & Tech Low-Code Chapter
Anouke names the thing that really matters at scale. The number of apps is rarely the deciding factor. Instead, what keeps a large landscape healthy is every team solving the same problem the same way, and that is exactly what the chapter set out to arrange.
Embedded developers keep quality consistent
Quality stays high when experienced developers sit inside the teams long enough to learn how the organisation works. The Low-Code Chapter at dsm-firmenich works that way, with embedded developers from several partners, The Orange Force among them. They stay, and they build alongside the teams.
The commitment of a long-term collaboration is what we benefit from the most. Our partnership with TOF offers us skilled, proactive developers who are able to think along with us. Additionally, the longer developers are embedded in the organization, the more they understand the organization and its stakeholders. Wieke and Jeffrey from TOF also regularly come to our office to brainstorm about new opportunities with us and to further support us in executing them.
Anouke Tielens-Coenegracht, Chapter Lead of dsm-firmenich’s Digital & Tech Low-Code Chapter
Continuity pays off in small, daily ways. For example, developers who have been around know who to ask and which patterns the chapter has already agreed on, and they spot early where a new app will touch something else in the landscape. That shared habit is what keeps around 150 applications working as one landscape.
What our consultants have built at dsm-firmenich
Since 2023, The Orange Force has kept some of our best consultants embedded at dsm-firmenich, building applications the teams use every day. Two of them give a good sense of the range.
Project 01
Fortified Kernels: a sales app for micronutrient-enriched rice
Fortified Kernels is a recent success for our consultants, built for dsm-firmenich’s sales teams in Asia. Representatives use it to show customers how dsm-firmenich enriches rice with micronutrients, which makes the products more nutritious.
The application also carries detailed information on compositions and permissible claims per country, and it highlights and learns from specific products. For a regulated life sciences product sold across many markets, getting the permissible claims right per country is the heart of the work, and the app puts that within easy reach of the sales team.
Project 02
A generative AI hackathon on the shop floor
In October 2024, dsm-firmenich and The Orange Force ran a Mendix and generative AI hackathon focused on preventing incidents with machines on the shop floor. Around 15 developers took part, split into three teams.
To begin with, the day opened with training on Mendix and GenAI from Freek Brinkhuis, Mendix Product MVP and Architect at The Orange Force. The GenAI services came from Amazon Web Services and slotted into both existing and new Mendix applications without much fuss. After a full day of intense development, all three teams had built something that provided immediate value and opened the door to plenty of other use cases. The business stakeholder from Operational Excellence, there for the Manufacturing community, left impressed.
The hackathon contributed greatly to our drive to innovate. We already had the idea of doing something with GenAI, but TOF brainstorming with us, helping to bring it closer to our stakeholders, and having one of their experts provide training, has made it the success it clearly was. TOF has given us that final push to execute our ideas.
Anouke Tielens-Coenegracht, Chapter Lead of dsm-firmenich’s Digital & Tech Low-Code Chapter
Results after scaling Mendix at dsm-firmenich
After roughly ten years of working with Mendix, and working with The Orange Force since 2023, dsm-firmenich has its own in-house developer team and an extensive Mendix landscape of around 150 applications. Our consultants have built a solid share of it, and we are proud of that.
That landscape helps dsm-firmenich bring more sustainable products to market faster. Developers can try an idea, put a prototype in front of colleagues, then build genuinely complex features that stay easy to use for the people on the other end. What comes out is technically robust and lines up with what dsm-firmenich actually needs.
As a result, Mendix is now part of how the business runs. Colleagues in almost every department use it to get their work done faster, which saves time and cost, and that time goes straight back into the next idea, such as bringing GenAI into Mendix applications.
Advice for companies starting with Mendix
We asked Anouke what working with Mendix has meant so far, and what she would tell a company just getting started.
Working with Mendix provides a solid foundation for developing and presenting your own solutions within your business and to your customers. I think Mendix is a very easy and accessible way to do things fast.
Just try it. You can start very small with Mendix. But just start and see what value it adds and which perks it can give you. There are plenty of experts and partners that can help you; this is not a journey you have to go on alone.
Anouke Tielens-Coenegracht, Chapter Lead of dsm-firmenich’s Digital & Tech Low-Code Chapter
dsm-firmenich and Mendix in numbers
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Mendix adoption started | 2016 |
| Applications in the landscape | About 150 |
| The Orange Force involved since | 2023 |
| Employees worldwide | About 21,000 |
| Countries active in | Over 60 |
| Company formed | 2022, merger of DSM and Firmenich |
| Headquarters | Maastricht, The Netherlands and Basel, Switzerland |
| Generative AI hackathon | October 2024, around 15 developers, three teams |
Build Something Like This With Us
dsm-firmenich runs Mendix apps in almost every department. If yours are spreading across departments too, we’ll tell you straight what it takes to keep them manageable.