Moline Bearing Company

Moline Bearing Company is a small manufacturer of mounted ball, Type E roller and spherical M2000 bearings, located in St. Charles, Illinois. The company has four additional warehouses across the United States, and does significant overseas business as well.

The company had had a need for some time to replace their aging inventory management and accounting software with a true Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. As Moline president David Fauntleroy explains, Moline is a growing company whose needs had exceeded the capabilities of its previous system. We wanted to get as close as possible to what the big guys use, without having to spend a fortune in the process.

The legacy software ran on an older version of the Apple Mac OS, and lacked many key features that Moline required, costing the company real money in missed orders and poor inventory tracking. Fauntleroy identified several key drivers in his search for a new ERP system, chief among them the ability to run on the more modern Mac OS X operating system, and an approach that leveraged the power of a full relational database with visibility into detailed inventory history and traceability, and proactive control over all business operations.

That search led him to OpenMFG, the former name of xTuple - a company with an open source-based ERP system which met both of those key tests. In addition to running on Mac OS X on both the client and the server, and building its application on the open source PostgreSQL database, xTuple also took an approach to developing its own product that Moline appreciated. "All the systems I looked at lacked some features that Moline considered crucial for running the business. xTuple had the manufacturing and inventory tracking functions that previous systems had lacked and was willing to enhance their system to give Moline the additional tools they needed."

Customers Drive New Features

That enhancement process built on the open source experience of xTuple's founders. All customers and solution provider partners receive full access to the xTuple source code and under an innovative community-based approach, are actually encouraged to make enhancements to the product. xTuple manages the code contributions from partners and customers much like an open source project and actually incorporates those contributions back into the main, company-supported product.

A crucial element of this community development process is the xTuple solution provider. These professionals are typically veterans of multiple ERP system deployments (often larger packages such as SAP and Oracle), and have been rigorously trained on the xTuple product as well. Their role is to work with end-user customers to really understand the business objectives where does the company need to improve performance? Where could the company be more efficient in its daily operations? What information do the decision-makers need in order to better run the business? And then, only then, how can the software help to support the company's objectives?

There is a temptation among smaller companies in particular to skip over this crucial step, and purchase software reactively, based on slick sales pitches. But Moline's Fauntleroy recognized the importance of this outside analysis, and engaged a local xTuple partner, Frank Parks: "My biggest concern in looking at new systems was the realization that I did not have the staff to properly review the program. By spending the money up front on an Enterprise Assessment (EA) of Moline's needs, we were able to more fully understand how the program would function for Moline and what improvements would be required for a successful implementation."

Frank Parks, who continues to work as a consultant to Moline today, adds, "The entire EA process was a win-win solution. It allowed all of us to identify enhancements, costs, risks and requirements. This allowed us to bring the project up on time and on budget with satisfied users. The EA allowed Moline to benefit from the expertise of savvy manufacturing and ERP veterans and more importantly, led directly to the implementation of key functionality that Moline needed to improve its business processes based on our recommendations."

How It Works

For example, xTuple and Parks worked together to implement a real-time available to promise window into time-phased component inventory availability, called Pending Availability, at the time of sales order entry. As Fauntleroy explains, Moline is very much a just-in-time manufacturer. "The business is driven by customers that do not keep backup inventory for the Moline products. This means that being able to accurately promise is crucial to our success. xTuple gives us the tools to see what is available and when, both for items we purchase and resell but also those we manufacture."

There are also benefits that Moline now enjoys by virtue of xTuple's robust architecture, including the ability to have multiple sessions open in the application at once. Fauntleroy notes, "this is a big productivity gain, since we can leave - say - a purchase order open while we deal with a customer issue. Before, we had to get out of the purchase order, take care of the customer then start over on the purchase order."  And because xTuple is fully internet-enabled, users can access the system from anywhere, even over a regular dialup connection which has several benefits for small business owners like Fauntleroy: "This allows the ability to travel more if needed and still be able to be in touch. I can also work from home on projects that I don't always have time to focus on at the office."

In the final analysis, says Moline Bearing's president, the most important thing that xTuple provides him is visibility: Being able to see everything that is happening in the business. This leads to better control of the business because you know what to order, when to order, and what to produce. The promise of this level of visibility has been a leading force for adoption of ERP systems by larger companies, running on expensive proprietary hardware and software systems. But now, thanks to xTuple and the revolution of open source software, smaller companies can realize those same benefits for a fraction of the cost. Its all part of what xTuple calls "software for the rest of us."