Summary
Harvard Custom Manufacturing has driven impressive growth,
even in the years of declining military budgets, via “competitive
pricing, high quality, and on-time delivery”. Harvard
was able to adhere to these business tenets in part through
the superior control afforded by an agile, scalable, and robust
ERP system. Relevant Business Systems has supported Harvard’s
EMS business and their aggressive strategy for growth and
profitability for nine years, seamlessly and rapidly integrating
acquired facilities and providing headache-free performance
in existing facilities.
Customer Profile
Harvard Custom Manufacturing (HCM) is a leading Contract Electronic
Manufacturer currently operating two facilities to manufacture
and test complex “box” and panel, printed circuit
board, and cable/harness assemblies. Their customer base spans
the telecommunications, networking, medical, aviation, computer,
industrial, and the military electronics industries. Their
work for Department of Defense prime contractors, however,
initially shaped the business and continues to drive much
of its culture, business processes, and software application
demands.
HCM was founded in 1994 through a management
buyout of Northrop Grumman’s operations in Salisbury,
MD. They started out with minimal sales, 60 employees, and
the conviction that rapid growth would follow. HCM has grown
both organically and through acquisition. Part of HCM’s
strategy has been to acquire customer-dedicated and/or labor-only
facilities, convert them to full turnkey, dramatically increase
their sales, and further integrate into them HCM or profitably
divest them. By 2000, HCM was operating facilities in California,
Texas, New York, and Maryland, employed over 900 people and
supported sales in excess of $250 million. Harvard ran the
same ERP system in all facilities. HCM’s strategy of
acquisition, turn around and integration/divestiture has required
agility on the part of management and their software support.
Business Requirements
Nine years ago, when Harvard Custom Manufacturing was spun
out of Northrop Grumman, Harvard’s management faced
an immediate dilemma. The spin out was to be a clean break;
HCM’s management team knew they’d leave the building
on Friday evening as Northrop employees and show up on Monday
to run an independent business – a business unsupported
by Northrop’s home grown, legacy systems. HCM wouldn’t
even be able to effectively take orders until they had new
software in place. At the time, a typical ERP installation
could take over 15 months – time Harvard could not afford.
In addition to an extremely tight timetable,
Harvard had other critical system requirements. Most of their
products were manufactured to mil-spec, making superior component/part
number traceability essential. Job cost tracking and change
order control were also critical to their build-to-order and
revision-intensive business. Lastly, HCM was looking for a
scalable system, supported by a strong customer service team
that could deliver rapid installation of a product with a
proven track record in defense-oriented businesses.
The Solution
Relevant Business System’s “Accelerated Implementation
Program” fit the bill for HCM’s implementation
timetable. From the date of the software purchase to up-and-running
took six weeks. Marc Renick, Vice President of HCM’s
Salisbury business unit states, “We thought this was
possible because we were so small back then, but the HCM/Relevant
team repeated their six-week performance in 1997, when we
purchased Atlantic Design, an Ogden Corporation company with
sales in the millions. We were able to convert from Atlantic’s
legacy system to Relevant in the same six weeks, despite the
larger size and greater complexity of the business.”
According to Tony Rodriguez, currently Corporate
Director of Operations and a member of the original implementation
team, HCM picked the Relevant system because it better addressed
key needs of manufacturing for the military, without customization.
Standard functionality
included:
- Project Control – which
enabled HCM to run the business by project number, audit
against project and plan and analyze by project.
- Engineering Control – provided
the ability to control by Rev level, critical to a business
that often finds itself providing low and medium volume
complex assemblies that go through many revisions over the
life of a part number.
- Cost Control – allowed HCM
to roll up average actual cost by project.
Nine years later, Rodriguez remains convinced
they made the right choice: “We haven’t needed
to add a single module. Relevant fit our needs very well then,
and it still does today.”
Perhaps even more telling, Marc Renick states,
“I’m hard pressed to remember an issue with the
software or any software-related downtime.”
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