To Increase Quality and On-Time Delivery
Multiple, standalone systems not connected were taking valuable time that could be better spent inventing new products, serving customers and growing the business.
We knew we had to turn this situation around to keep our existing customers and grow to find new ones. Eldon James prides itself on its ability to communicate with customers, constantly providing them the information they need to keep their production operations running.
IQMS has proven it can grow with the company, and we could easily grow 50 to 100 times larger with IQMS.
Eldon James’ business quit scaling when their stand-alone systems did. Multiple, standalone systems not connected were taking valuable time that could be better spent inventing new products, serving customers and growing the business.
Their stand-alone QuickBooks accounting application could not keep up with the speed and scale they were expanding at. Not having accounting and finance systems integrated with manufacturing also was making it more difficult to balance supplier inventory levels and coordinate the inbound inspection with production planning. Because accounting and manufacturing systems weren’t integrated, more time had to be allocated for job setup, quality management, and trial production runs.
Relying on non-integrated systems took valuable time out of every day to get routine tasks done and was starting to impact the company’s growth potential in the following areas:
With our disconnected systems, it was at times a challenge to get products shipped on time to customers. If a late part ships from Eldon James then a customer of ours may shut down an entire production line because they’re waiting on one specific fitting,” said Andrea Collins, System Operations Manager. She continued, “We knew we had to turn this situation around to keep our existing customers and grow to find new ones.” Andrea adds that “Eldon James prides itself on its ability to communicate with customers, constantly providing them the information they need to keep their production operations running.
Eldon James was at an inflection point and knew the siloed systems had to go:
Quality Assurance needed the following from the existing siloed systems to stay competitive, yet was finding workarounds very time-consuming and costly from a delay standpoint:
Exceptional product quality and on-time deliveries are the two differentiating service values that Eldon James had engrained into every manufacturing and customer-facing process they have for years. With the siloed systems that often required manual intervention, she said the company had to make many special efforts to get customers the information they needed.
Eldon James quickly began the search for a Manufacturing Execution System that could scale across its entire business. Their requirements included a system capable of integrating accounting, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), finance, manufacturing, operations, and service, ideally located on a single database. The company also wanted to find someone who had expertise in the plastics industry, who could not only provide the system but also provide guidance on how to streamline operations for future growth. They quickly realized what they needed was an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system designed specifically for the plastics industry. That’s when they called IQMS (now DELMIAWorks).
...we were going to need a process to scale international responses so we could stay in front of the growing demand globally for our products.
CEO and founder Marcia Coulson says the decision to select IQMS as their ERP systems provider and partner “was probably the single best decision I’ve ever made for the company. That was one of those milestones in the history of Eldon James that allowed the company to grow,” she continued. Marcia and her senior management team went to work defining an implementation plan with IQMS and quickly began to see the difference in operations, quality and most of all, customer satisfaction. Here’s what Eldon James was able to accomplish and has enjoyed the efficiencies for the past 10 years with IQMS by breaking free of the siloed systems that held them back in the past:
Improving product quality, increasing production performance, and achieving the highest level of customer responsiveness are just a few of the many areas Eldon James is excelling at today. Their results show that the more integrated an MES system is with accounting, finance, Supply Chain Management (SCM), CRM and ERP, the greater the opportunities to excel for current customers and grow by winning new ones. An integrated MES has removed the roadblocks to greater revenue growth and enables Eldon James to enter and excel at winning new business in new markets.
IQMS was acquired by Dassault Systèmes® and has been rebranded as DELMIAWorks, part of the 3DEXPERIENCE® Works design to manufacturing software portfolio for mid-market manufacturers.
Founded in 1987, Eldon James manufactures a wide range of standard and custom hose fittings, adapters, couplers, elbows, specialized connector configurations and plastic tubing, medical-grade tubing, and formed tubing. Their PVC-free tubing and connectors serve a broad spectrum of domestic and international market sectors such as transportation, automotive, medical device, water purification and industrial.
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