The Company: Trimlite is a multi-site manufacturer of doors, specifically with glass inserts in the door or surrounding area. The company has two major sites in Canada, in Surrey, B.C., and Burlington, Ont.
The Challenge: Trimlite had a legacy IT system in place that was not fully integrated across the company’s global operations. There were two disparate systems in place in Canada and the U.S., making it impossible for management to get a full picture at any given time of was happening in the business. In addition, only a few employees had the knowledge to run the dated IT system properly. The approach was very hands on and hard to run. Trimlite also had an arduous process in place for locating inventory in a timely manner and needed a new system that would provide accurate and timely order management and financial information. The old system had no bills of materials created, no structures, inadequate product costs due to manual entry and no KPMs. The system was not centralized and the hands-on approach made day-to-day activities very inefficient. Trimlite was in the market for technology that would be able to run itself, give the company accurate data to make informed decisions, and integrate global information into one easily digestible report.
The Strategy: Once Trimlite identified these pain points in its business, the company turned to Infor10 ERP Business (Syteline) to streamline day-to-day operations across the network in real-time. Infor10 ERP Business provided the foundation to improve business efficiency, customer service and overall manufacturing productivity. The application delivered the complete package, with tight integration to tools for managing sales and customer service relationships, production, supply chain inventory and financial service management. In addition to gaining access to real-time information, Trimlite staff was able to seamlessly use this new and updated technology, increasing efficiency in day-to-day processes. The staff was able to create specific rules for the technology to perform upon and gain instant access to specific parts of the business. Manual entry and data redundancies were a thing of the past.
The Results: Today, Trimlite has access to information in real-time, resulting in better customer service. Management and staff know immediately what they have, when they will have it, and how quickly they can get it out the door. In addition, the history that is built into the systems provides the team with greater visibility and knowledge into existing deals. The staff has gone from doing the work manually to letting the system do the work and managing the system.
A version of this case study ran as part of the 2012 Software Case Study Guide in the September 2012 issue of Manufacturing AUTOMATION.
