Newport Beach, CA
Steel Pipe Manufacturer
Re-engineering, ERP selection & implementation
Background
A private, family-owned, mid-sized corrugated steel pipe manufacturer with a strong client base across the Western United States, in business for over 50 years on tried-and-true practices with little change to its processes, procedures, or systems — until a shifting marketplace pushed them to modernize.
Situation
Replacing a 25-year-old home-grown computer system meant confronting a business with no real network infrastructure: each plant ran its own Unix/Pick system for sales orders and shipping only, while corporate ran a separate system for A/R, A/P, G/L, and payroll — none of it connected. Inventory and production were tracked entirely by hand, and sales staff had to physically walk the yard to verify material for every order. Ninety percent of employees averaged 30 years of tenure, adding real change-management stakes, and inventory records had to be built from scratch.
Solution
We started by building buy-in through a business re-engineering process that reframed how the company thought about itself, followed by an RFP and selection process that led them to Dynamics-NAV and Tectura. We took the whole team through APICS training, built a new network infrastructure, and constructed inventory items, costing, G/L, and production data from the ground up, working closely with management to keep the project on track.
Results
Payroll and the Portland, Oregon plastics facility were live within 6 months. Through training, the team grasped the new system well enough to complete the remaining sites within 18 months, and go-live was uneventful and successful. The company hired an IT Manager and an Operations Accounting Manager to bring the in-house skills they'd been missing.
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