CNC Swiss Machining Company Moves From Paper to ERP

Key ERP Search Criteria

The owner of the company knew that ERP was the first step to automating the business and engaged the management team and Rose of Sharon to list what was most important to them in a new ERP. The challenge for some managers was lack of knowledge of what was possible. Rose of Sharon helped to paint that vision based on her expertise.

The team asked for:

• Real-time tracking of inventory and production, to know what was where at all time
• Easy Job Scheduling to improve lead-times and reduce late shipments
• Full automated traceability of product from raw material to finished product

Rose of Sharon added to the criteria:

• An easy-to-navigate platform for users with .NET technology
• Customizable without extensive technical expertise, updates keep customizations
• ERP company with established R&D history of improvements and plans for the future
• Full ERP-function to run the entire business, including financials, quality, and CRM
• Competitive cost of ownership for next five years as compared with other solutions
• Good fit for machining, the company can provide customer names in the same industry

ERP’s Compared:

JobBoss, Aptean M2M, Global Shop Solutions, SYSPRO, E2, EstiTrack/Henning, ProShop, SAP

Rose of Sharon developed a basic questionnaire that covered the key criteria and had phone conversations with each of the companies listed. These calls each took about 30 minutes each and narrowed the ERP’s possible to three – Global Shop Solutions, SYSPRO and the most inexpensive, Henning Software. Both Global Shop and SYSPRO were brought in to demo their products for the senior management team. Both were asked to provide references. Several managers visited a local shop that had been running Global Shop for a long time and saw the product in use. They were impressed with what they saw. Both Syspro and Global Shop appeared to meet all criteria, though Syspro sold the modules instead of the entire program at one time. Negotiations were started, and Global Shop won on price, company history and functionality. The entire process took about 90 days.

Implementation

Global Shop sent one of their manufacturing expert consultants for a 4-day workshop to begin the implementation process. They assigned an internal project manager as well as a financial consultant to partner in the implementation. Overall 15 days of on-site consulting and unlimited hours of remote support were provided to the company for the implementation. Rose of Sharon lead the effort and participated in every hour of engagement and did the data-migration.

There were many decisions along the way that she facilitated including:

• Infinite or Definite scheduling
• Defining logical material codes for item masters
• Work center logic
• Defining of sequences for standard routers
• Tracking of direct vs. indirect labor
• Creating bar-coded “Move Tickets” for identifying product
• Best customizations for reports, assigning process & data integrity responsibilities
• Types of automated notifications

Results

According to the business owner “The best part is having complete visibility of what’s happening on the shop floor in real-time. We can see first-hand and delegate responsibilities faster. This allows us to move people into production quicker, making us more efficient while helping improve on-time deliveries.”

Other benefits included:

• The ability to save and link key documents within the ERP at the field level for quick access.
• Better payroll management with daily balancing of work done by employee
• Excellent sales reports by part number, salesperson or customer that allowed in-depth analysis of sales trends
• Customized KPI (Key Performance Indicator) reports
• Data entry errors almost eliminated since data is automatically transferred from Global Shop’s CRM to the Estimate, the Quote, the Sales Order, the Job Orders, NCMR’s, BOM’s, Packing Lists and Invoices.
• Reduction in administrative staff needed since there is less data entry and copying of papers to give to people in the shop and office.
• Reduction in paper printed.
• Reduction in production errors since all bins of parts are clearly labeled with quantity, operator, job number, heat number, last operation, next operation, # of parts completed.
• Instant notification of bad parts, real cost of quality when parts are scrapped

To see the case study created by Global Shop Solutions for this particular company or to request information on how Rose of Sharon DeVos of IIoT Automating can help your company formulate an IIoT Plan and/or provide an ERP search just for your company, contact us.