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The Company
Flambeau, Inc. brings plastic
to life for thousands of businesses and millions of professionals, hobbyists,
and enthusiasts worldwide. Founded in 1947, Flambeau has grown to encompass
a diverse range of manufactured plastic products, including agricultural
equipment and machinery, automotive parts, electronics, medical devices,
toys, packaging solutions, and much more. The company employees
thousands of associates and
occupies over 1,400,000 square feet of production space with eight
manufacturing locations worldwide, including U.S. facilities in Wisconsin,
Indiana, Georgia, Ohio,
California, and North Carolina, and operations in the UK and México.
Return on Investment
- Six month implementation
- Gained visibility and control across the UK facility utilizing multiple
currencies
- Increased data integrity and accessibility
- Empowered shop floor employees to operate lean
- Improved internal and customer communications
- Reduced inventory costs and improved overall costing accuracy
- Reduced required batch size by up to 50%
- Achieved greater efficiency on the shop floor
Software
EnterpriseIQ™ ERP software system with RealTime Machine Monitoring,
Wireless Warehouse Management System (WMS), Fixed Assets Manager, Business
Intelligence, ShopData modules, and more.
Hardware
Oracle database with
Windows-based PCs.
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Plastics Manufacturer Sets Higher Standards of Performance
with Rapid ERP Implementation from IQMS
With more than six decades of growth and achievement in
plastics manufacturing, Flambeau, Inc. is unremitting in its pursuit of excellence. From W.R. Sauey’s
invention of a fishing lure in 1947, Flambeau has earned the reputation of being “a single source
solution in plastic,” providing a diverse range of products and services. These range from tooling design
for injection and blow-molded thermoplastic components through contract manufacturing of
complete assemblies.
The privately held company generates $250 million in revenue
annually, and operates a number of its own product divisions, including
Duncan® Toys, ArtBin® products, and Vlchek® floral containers.
Flambeau, Inc. purchased two companies in the UK over eight years ago
and consolidated them to form Flambeau EuroPlast Ltd.
A culture of teamwork, knowledge and excellence allows Flambeau
EuroPlast to deliver innovation through committed effort and continuous
improvement in all that it does. Yet as the company grew, its legacy systems
hampered efforts to evolve leaner operations. Prior to 2008, EuroPlast
relied on its parent company’s material requirements planning (MRP)
software for production planning and inventory control. This was coupled
to a separate accounting software package for financial management because
the UK company uses multiple currencies. Both the MRP and accounting systems
ran on separate databases that did not interface well with each other.
The effect was a patchwork solution that required the UK company to use
spread sheets to manually track vital business information, often leading
to errors in critical functions such as costing and inventory control.
“Credible management information was very difficult
to acquire,” explains Norman Buckett, Supply Chain Manager at Flambeau
EuroPlast. “We were manually inputting data with no true visibility
of the implications across our business. Key management information was
often missing or difficult to validate as our data lacked integrity. This
meant we had trouble identifying issues and correcting problems. Each
month we saw significant variances, but we had no method within the system
to identify the root cause on which to focus our improvement effort.”
Driven to uphold its standard of excellence, Flambeau EuroPlast
sought to replace its twodatabase systems with a single, comprehensive
enterprise-wide solution. The company wanted a user-friendly, visual system
that delivered the same real-time data for both production and financial
management purposes. Tight assimilation between those areas was critical
so that the company could better forecast costs and inventory needs, while
driving greater efficiency on the shop floor. Flambeau, Inc. was also
instrumental in the system selection process to ensure the chosen system
had the future potential to be rolled out across the group.
After an extensive review of competitive tenders, EnterpriseIQ
-- the innovative, single-source enterprise software solution written,
developed and supported by IQMS -- was selected. EnterpriseIQ provides
a powerful and cohesive solution that meets
the unique and varied requirements of industry specific manufacturers.
Features such as a comprehensive financial
management system, RealTime Machine Monitoring, regrind usage and consumption
capabilities, multi-level bills of
manufacture, and multi-tool and family-tool functionality sold Flambeau
on EnterpriseIQ.
“We saw EnterpriseIQ as a best fit for us because IQMS
has extensive experience in plastics,” says Buckett. “Other
vendor solutions were not as comprehensive and tailored to our business.
We also liked that EnterpriseIQ operates on a single database. Now everyone
in our company has the same, accurate real-time data at their fingertips.”
Flambeau went live with EnterpriseIQ in April 2008 after
a six-month implementation process. “Implementation went very smoothly,”
says Buckett. “As a company we recognized that we would also need
to invest in training our employees on the system before taking it live.
IQMS partnered with us to lay the ground work, and we got all of our people
using the scanners and the system in test mode. We went live over the
course of one weekend without experiencing any unexpected issues.”
The company has since seen significant benefits on both
the production and financial sides of its business. According to Buckett,
the greatest improvement has been derived from using EnterpriseIQ RealTime
Machine Monitoring along with the system’s bar coding capabilities.
“RealTime and bar coding have brought a new level of
structure and control to our business,” explains Buckett. “RealTime
lets us track production as parts are being made. This means we can drive
optimal performance in the different cells of our manufacturing operation,
but the benefit doesn’t stop on the shop floor. EnterpriseIQ automatically
updates every aspect of our business with the same data. So shop orders,
schedules, finished product counts, and more all reflect instantly what
happens in production.”
One area where Flambeau has seen improvements is in inventory
reduction. The company uses the EnterpriseIQ inventory module to control
inventory and costs, and serialized bar coding and scanners to track jobs.
Once a bar code label is activated, data pertaining to that job is scanned
against the code throughout the production process. Each scan instantly
updates all inventory-reliant areas of the business with real-time inventory
information.
“Our inventory visibility is much better than it was
before,” says Buckett. “Bar coding asserts a discipline into
the process that ensures accuracy. In the past, we used work orders with
manual labels which relied on the label being filled out correctly. With
EnterpriseIQ, data is hard coded within the system, so any problems can
be traced easily, and customers’ queries can be answered more readily.”
Features within the EnterpriseIQ system such as lot number
tracking, traceability, and serialized inventory control let Flambeau
minimize the cost of its inventory. In addition, with RealTime the company
can store, track and fulfill orders based on what is actually happening
on the production floor.
As Buckett describes it, RealTime has cascaded out from
being a business management tool to being a dynamic picture of the shop
floor. Flambeau uses IQMS RealTime Machine Monitoring to observe individual
machine performance. Color-coding indicates machine and job status as
it happens, and provides immediate, visible communication directly between
the shop floor and ERP scheduling module.
“With RealTime green means lean,” explains Buckett.
“Shop-floor supervisors and anyone else looking at the screen can
tell instantly whether their machines are running to standard, and move
quickly to correct any problems when they aren’t. When we started
with EnterpriseIQ, we lacked visibility of our operational performance.
Now that this is visible in real time, quick actions can be made to correct
all variances.”
Buckett says this improvement stems from the control RealTime
affords shop floor personnel to make immediate adjustments if a machine
cycle has slowed down.
“RealTime gives our shop floor employees ownership
they did not have before,” says Buckett. “That’s gone a
long way in improving the quality of our output. We used to make large
batches because we weren’t confident in the fulfillment of the plan.
But using EnterpriseIQ, we’ve reduced our batch size as much as 50
percent. Now we’re in line with our monthly requirements and we’re
saving money in our material costs.”
The power of continuous communication with the shop floor
delivers benefit to the whole business team. Flambeau uses the detailed
scheduling modules to forecast sales and material requirements and the
production data, gathered from RealTime, to track and report on costs
and variances as they occur. All this information together helps to manage
many other aspects of the accounting and finance side of its business.
“EnterpriseIQ has given us the true ability to manage
our business down to much finer detail,” explains Michaela Stodart,
Financial Controller at Flambeau. “With our old system in place,
we were very much going on a gut feeling because we did not have access
to real-time data. Now we can be more objective and proactive in our approach.”
Flambeau EuroPlast’s move to EnterpriseIQ has given
the company a good platform on which to move and expand its business.
EnterpriseIQ has helped us set new standards in performance
that we could have never achieved while using our old system,” says
Stodart. “EnterpriseIQ literally captures every aspect of our business
and puts it within easy reach. We can now take on new and more complex
jobs with confidence, knowing we have the processes and procedures in
place to ensure success.”
Flambeau will continue to reap benefits of the EnterpriseIQ
system. In the future, the company plans to add Quality Management and
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) modules from IQMS to the mix. But
according to Buckett that’s all fine tuning for an investment that’s
already proven its worth.
“Our investment in EnterpriseIQ has fulfilled our investment
criteria,” says Buckett. “We’ve achieved visibility and
control over a very intricate set of operations, and we’re now poised
to set new standards of excellence into the future.”
Founded in 1947, Flambeau Inc. provides a diverse range
of products and services from injection and blow-molded thermoplastic
components to contract manufacturing of complete assemblies. The privately
held company generates $250 million in revenue annually, and operates
a number of its own product divisions, including Duncan® Toys and
ArtBin® products. Eight years ago, Flambeau purchased two companies
in the UK and consolidated them to form Flambeau EuroPlast Ltd. With this
growth, the company’s enterprise operations were spread over a patchwork
of solutions that did not interface well and required manual tracking
of vital business information, which often lead to errors in costing and
inventory control. For this reason, Flambeau replaced its legacy systems
with EnterpriseIQ – the innovative, single-source enterprise software
solution written, developed and supported by IQMS. EnterpriseIQ provides
a powerful and cohesive solution that meets the unique and varied requirements
of industry specific manufacturers. Features such as comprehensive financial
management, RealTime Machine Monitoring, regrind usage and consumption
capabilities, multi-level bills of manufacture, and multi-tool and family-tool
functionality sold Flambeau on EnterpriseIQ. Using EnterpriseIQ, Flambeau
has seen benefits such as: lower inventory costs; improved data accessibility;
and greater visibility and control across multiple facilities and currencies.
Because EnterpriseIQ gives Flambeau the ability to manage its business
down to much finer detail, the company is now poised to expand its reach
with confidence.
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