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Marijn Lammertink joined Coulisse at 21, while she was still studying. She started in customer care — answering questions, solving problems, learning how the business worked from the ground up. From there she moved into project management, then business intelligence. Each role taught her something the next one needed.
"All those different roles have helped me do what I do now," she explains. "When you've worked in customer care, you understand what good service actually means. When you've been in project management, you know how to get things done. It all connects."
Today she works as a Business Performance Analyst and is part of Team NOVA — Coulisse's internal AI taskforce. A team of colleagues from different departments, each bringing their own expertise. Nobody is there because they have to be.
"The culture is open, curious, enthusiastic — and honestly, a lot of fun. You start seeing opportunities you wouldn't have spotted before."
- Marijn Lammertink - Business analyst
One of the first tools Marijn built with AI was a container fill-rate calculator. Before, Supply Chain and Sales were working this out manually — estimating how many items would fit in a 20- or 40-foot container, request by request. It wasn't always reliable. Containers sometimes left around 60% full, or an order turned out not to fit, which meant an extra container or a last-minute switch to airfreight: more cost, later delivery.
"It doesn't dictate how a container is actually loaded — but it gives us a far better estimate of what fits. That means we can advise customers earlier: when does a full container make sense, what's the most cost-effective way to ship. We can actually answer that properly now."
The tool is used daily across Supply Chain, Purchase, and Sales. It saves time internally — and helps customers fill their container orders optimally before they commit.
"It's an optimization on both sides — for us and for the customer."
What's next: the same approach is now being applied to quotations. Marijn is building a tool that lets Sales produce quotes for container orders with up-to-date pricing, so customers get a correct answer sooner.
"It's the same idea: professionalize the process, and serve the customer faster and more accurately.”
At Coulisse's pleating facility, the machines send data every ten seconds. For years, that data was collected and never used. Marijn built a real-time dashboard to change that — tracking machine status, output, speed, errors, and downtime.
"Just making that data visible lifted productivity by 15 to 20 percent within a few months. And now the dashboard is live on the production floor — the team can see everything in real time and act immediately when something needs attention."
But what she remembers most isn't the number. It's the reaction.
"At first, some people thought — we're being watched. But then they saw what the data actually showed. It showed how good a job they were doing. That shift, from uncertainty to pride — that was a really good moment."
Faster production, fewer delays, a team that can see and own their own performance. For customers, that means better lead times. For colleagues, it means the data works for them.
Marijn doesn't oversell it. AI can support forecasting, but a forecast is always a probability. Customer knowledge and sales experience remain the most important input — AI helps use that information better, not replace it.
"We try to help people with the tasks that take too much time or never get prioritized — so the team can focus on the work that actually needs them. We start small, we learn, and we build from there."
Every tool the NOVA team builds is reviewed by Coulisse's IT and security teams before it goes live. Speed doesn't come at the cost of responsibility.
"We're business people solving business problems — and we can move fast. But that only works because we have the right checks in place. We don't skip that step, and we wouldn't want to."
Next up for Marijn: a service tool for R+T, smarter order flows, and more dashboards that give teams the right information at the right moment. The work continues — carefully, creatively, and always with the customer in mind.