Sure Plus Manufacturing in Chicago Heights, Ill., produces
the trucking industry’s most distinctive line of quality
mirrors. These safety mirrors and assemblies are shipped throughout
the world and are available in several styles, such as chrome,
fender-mounted, convex, and rear, depending on the safety
concerns of the vehicle.
Since 1990, this industry-leading company
has ensured its customers get the products they want when
they want them by employing Relevant Business Systems’
ERP software, configured to meet Sure Plus’ demanding
needs. Just as importantly, Relevant software helps Sure Plus
manage and service its salespeople, most of whom are self-employed.
"Because of the way our business is
structured, we needed a system that would not only keep up
with our growing needs, but could also be adapted to the way
we work,” explains Patti Rivera, Systems Manager for
Sure Plus Manufacturing. “Our production, reporting,
invoicing, and packing slip programs are unique to our business.”
The key to creating a system that leverages
Sure Plus Manufacturing’s unique business practices
was modular ERP software. As a result, Sure Plus could optimize
its system by selecting from among the many available applications
and modules and uniquely configure them to address their specific
needs.
“That’s only part of the solution,
however,” emphasizes Relevant CEO Pat Garrehy. “Our
people have put in a lot of systems and know how to stretch
every bit of capability out of our various modules. Upon analyzing
what Sure Plus wanted to do, we were able to configure our
system in ways that made sense to them while still keeping
their software and infrastructure costs to a minimum.”
“Customizations from Relevant let
us incorporate our own business practices (such as combining
several steps into one procedure), making them easier for
us to do and more efficient,” adds Rivera. “Producing
over 600 invoices a week is no small task. These adaptations
have made our job functions less time-consuming and our business
lives easier.”
For example, once all orders are in, Sure
Plus runs an allocation on the Relevant system. The system
then internally creates packing slips, allocates and ships
product, and prints invoices without any other commands.
Managing the
Sales Team
Sure Plus is very proud to be the first company in its industry
with a national sales force that can provide customers with
immediate assistance. With 32 independent salespeople, Sure Plus
actually needs the same type of system as a very large multi-plant
company. With Relevant, two different modules work together
to make sure the system does what’s needed. First of
all, the Sales Order Management module lets Sure Plus input
and track customer orders, collecting and maintaining both
product- and customer-related data for the entire sales order
cycle, from initial order entry through shipping and invoicing.
“We keep track of all orders entered,
which salesperson has which account, and information on all
customers,“ Rivera says. “We can immediately access
the customer name as well as their shipment and billing addresses.
The system performs our sales tax computations and is also
our product catalog control (where we go to get product descriptions
and prices).
“As each sales order is entered, each
line item is automatically priced based on tables maintained
within the system,“ Rivera adds. “And as each
shipment is made against a sales order, the information for
invoicing is automatically generated. We can also determine
which salespeople are selling and which individual customers
are ordering, gaining a historical perspective on what is
being sold and purchased by specific organizations, thus enabling
us to spot buying trends.“
Going the next step, Sure Plus then creatively
uses Relevant’s Multi-Division module to break them
out from the “house.“ As a result, each salesperson
(i.e. division) has his/her own breakout of inventory, cost,
supply, and demand records. In manufacturing industry terms,
the “supply division“ (Sure Plus), plans, acquires
and transfers product to the “requiring division“
and the salesperson. In other words, the material is manufactured
at Sure Plus and upon an order, is automatically transferred
to the salesperson.
Managing Costs
is Key
By maintaining all item and component costs in the Relevant
system, Sure Plus knows exactly what it costs, in both parts
and labor, to make each mirror. Not only does this help in
pricing product and to verify that new production runs of
the product are as efficient as the standards, Purchasing
also uses the Manufacturing Cost Control module to verify
that the costs of to-be-ordered items and components are on
target. Of course, these stored costs also give Purchasing
a baseline to use when looking for better pricing from their
vendors.
The Production Engineering module typically
provides for the entry and maintenance of items, structuring
the Bills of Materials, and implementing engineering change
control. Active parts are automatically copied into other
item master files (such as Inventory Control) to assure consistency
of information throughout the system and provide data entry
efficiencies. Needless to say, Sure Plus adds a twist.
“We use it as the basis for our actual
invoicing,“ Rivera shares. “Not only do we get
our actual costs, including salesman costs for creating commissions,
but this module actually provides the prices for our invoicing.”
You might expect the same thing to happen
with other modules. For instance, Relevant originally created
the Engineering Change Order (ECO) module for aerospace and
defense contractors who were continually updating designs.
ECO then enforces discipline and management control over modifications
to bills of materials and shop floor routings. As component
and operation changes pass through an authorization and approval
process, they are logged into an ECO history database.
As a result, when the component demands
for each work order are created, the configurations are based
on the release date of the orders compared to the ECO effective
dates on the bills of materials. Sure Plus gets down to fundamentals.
“We use Engineering Change Order to
provide the basic set-up of all of our components and products,“
Rivera attests. “It is used for all orders sent to our
salespeople and relieves our finished goods. Once an order
is input into the system, this module says, ‘Here are
the components you will need to build these products and the
number of products needed’. It also tells you what has
come out of finished goods to help fill that order.“
Relevant’s Inventory Control serves
as the hub for all material transactions while monitoring
and controlling the execution of the material plan. It maintains
the inventory attributes for items, allows review of the current
time-phased material plan for an item, upholds work orders
and purchase requisitions, and records all material movements
and stock adjustments.
“We have 32 salespeople and Inventory
Control keeps track of all of their products and lets us know
what they’re selling,” Rivera adds. “Plus,
it gives us all the standard information one might expect,
such as what we have for finished goods and our stock of components
for production. To ensure that we always have the parts we
need to produce mirrors in a timely manner, we get reorder
point reports letting us know when we have reached our safety
stock levels.”
There is No
Substitute for Creativity
Sure Plus is exactly the type of company that profits from
a system such as Relevant’s. While larger organizations,
such as Lockheed-Martin, use many modules to their fullest
extent, Sure Plus efficiently leverages the attributes of
the basic modules plus a few others, using them creatively
to maximize their competitive advantages. From running a sales
organization of independent companies, to tracking orders
from beginning to end, to making sure each individual order
is filled on time, Sure Plus capitalizes on its own creativity
and that of the Relevant solution.
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