CR Control Systems, Inc., has been in the business of
designing, manufacturing and distributing products for marine aids to
navigation for over 35 years. Whether you're sailing in the Caribbean or
the Mediterranean you will likely see CR Control devices safely lighting
harbors you visit. Just recently the US Coast Guard purchased a large
quantity of CR Control Systems products as part of its plans for
homeland security.
In its early pre-computer days, CR Control had a manual
card system and each order would require staff pulling specific cards,
which represented the right quantities of specific parts and
sub-assemblies required for that order. In the early 1980's Bob Seidler,
company president, purchased their first Radio Shack computer. His
extremely talented wife, Renee, custom-built a database to meet their
basic inventory control needs. Radio Shack eventually gave way to
Windows and Excel spreadsheets, which worked reasonably well for a small
company of fewer than 10 employees. However, additional complexity was
about to strike.
The company transferred its in-house manufacturing to
three independent assembly houses in the Northeast US. Although they
still owned the raw materials, CR Control now shipped most of those raw
materials directly to the assembly houses in New Hampshire or New York.
As the product line continued to evolve and expand, now with over 1000
unique items and over 100 bills of material, confusion began to brew as
CR Control, situated in rural Vermont, tried to coordinate with the
assembly houses. "We were like chickens with our heads cut off,"
explained Bob, not fondly recalling the endless phone calls and the
day-long waits for answers as they ineffectively tried to keep their
inventory essentially "in their heads."
Did they have enough raw materials to meet orders? If
not, they might have to make an expensive rush purchase order for raw
materials to meet a customer's order. For a company their size, ordering
at the right time and for the right quantities meant substantial savings
if done correctly, and heightened expenses and potentially frustrated
customers, if not. They decided they needed an inexpensive inventory
control product that a small company could easily use but had powerful
features found in expensive systems.
While looking at several expensive manufacturing
systems, expensive at least for a company their size, Bob didn't know
that a solution existed literally yards away. Despite being corporate
neighbors, Bob did not know that MISys provided manufacturing software
for small- to mid-size manufacturers until he saw it advertised in a
national magazine. Bob initiated some discussion, and soon purchased the
smallest MISys configuration available, specifically Small Business
Edition Level 1, with 1 user license. They did not include any of the
ACCPAC® Advantage Series accounting modules, which they felt were too
complex for their existing needs. Bob hired Isa Ohrey, who had been the
company bookkeeper, to take over inventory management functions in 1999,
shortly after MISys was purchased.
It took Bob and Isa some time to plan out an item
numbering scheme that was both flexible and descriptive. "We wanted the
item number to say what it was, and also have flexibility in the system
for new additions," said Bob. "That took us more time to design than I
had thought it would, but once designed, MISys easily handled our
concept."
Preferred Logic, a MISys Business Partner, headquartered
in Windsor, Connecticut, spent a part of one day to insure the
installation was perfect, and Bob feels that was money extremely well
spent. "Preferred Logic, in the person of Fred Dean, came up to
Woodstock and in half a day got us totally set up and grounded in MISys.
It was important that we started on a solid footing. We were inclined,
as a small company, to do our own software installations and
implementations, but using Preferred Logic saved us a huge amount of
time and frustration, ultimately saving us money."
Isa had been investing some time on her own learning all
that MISys Level 1 could do. She made good use of the MISys on-line User
Guide, and the excellent free e-mail support and web-based User Group
Meetings, and attended a weeks training on the use of Level 1 offered by
MISys, Inc. With the help of these resources, Isa set up a system with
multiple locations, representing each assembly house as well as the
Vermont headquarters. Using the purchasing options within MISys she was
able to begin sending and transferring purchased raw materials to the
appropriate location, and she was able to know exactly how much of any
item was at each location. "We have enjoyed winning arguments with our
assembly houses, where they would tell us they are out of a specific
item," Isa explained. "I would quickly respond, after looking at MISys,
that no, they should have 150 of those left. They would look again, and
come back to the phone quite surprised that I was exactly right. It has
cut confusion, over-stocking, and under-stocking pretty much out of the
picture."
Isa also attended the Reporting for MISys "school", and
learned how to manipulate and modify the numerous Crystal Reports that
ship with MISys. Now she can create a report to quickly answer any
specific questions they may have, as well as maintain a consistent view
of their business.
We asked Bob what the positive effect was. "Well
certainly it was empowering to know what we had at any moment, and where
it was. That saved us an enormous amount of time that was not well-spent
in the past." Bob said no one lost hours at the company; instead they
were able to reinvent their jobs into more creative veins. "Instead of
many reactive hours on the phone, double checking inventory levels and
waiting for some kind of physical inventory response from the assembly
house before we could act decisively, we were able to calm down and use
our time for the constructive growth of the company." Bob feels he saved
easily a quarter of his time as the CEO by getting rid of
inventory-driven headaches. Based on what we know of his salary and the
low cost of Level 1 with 2 end-user licenses (they've added one
additional license) CR Control had an extremely short Return on
Investment (ROI).
"Another area of potential savings would be to take
advantage of the full integration between MISys and ACCPAC Advantage
Series accounting," says Isa. "Fortunately, as a small company, our
accounting data entry is not so bad. I am more concerned with preventing
errors, so an integrated system that migrates data from, say, Purchasing
to Payables would save time and reduce the chance of errors." Most
accounting products will allow for the importation of a manufacturing
subledger, but CR is going to investigate ACCPAC because it integrates
seamlessly with their MISys Manufacturing System.
CR Control Systems is planning to buy one more MISys
user license so that Bob can have direct access to the MISys data. As
president he is also the lead negotiator with their customers. Knowing
in real time the status of their raw materials, including many finished
or partly finished sub-assemblies, places him in a strong position to
gauge schedules, pricing and current locations of needed materials.
Both Bob and Isa refer to MISys as "their bible." MISys
has allowed CR Control Systems to maintain its small staff size, while
increasing manufacturing capacity through the use of contracted assembly
houses. The missing key was the ability to control and track the flow of
raw materials and finished goods to and from the assembly houses, and
base their decisions on accurate information of those stock levels and
transfers.
The MISys Small Business Edition has allowed one person,
Isa, to manage all raw and finished goods across several locations from
a central location, and provide Bob, as the lead negotiator with a truly
global client base, the information he needs to price accurately and
provide attainable delivery dates. Carrying too much inventory, or rush
pricing to complete an order, can be devastating to a small company. The
MISys Manufacturing System has not only helped prevent these costly
situations, it has allowed personnel to spend time on more gratifying
and creative work crucial to the continued growth of the company.
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