xTuple Case Study: Moline Bearing Company
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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, a young company with an open sourcebased
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, OpenMFG 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.
OpenMFG 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 OpenMFGs
founders. All customers and solution provider partners receive full access to the
OpenMFG source code and under an innovative community-based approach, are
actually encouraged to make enhancements to the product. OpenMFG 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 OpenMFG 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 OpenMFG 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 companys
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 Molines
Fauntleroy recognized the importance of this outside analysis, and engaged OpenMFGs
partner for greater Chicagoland, EzBizPartner, Inc.: 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 Molines needs both Moline and EzBizPartner 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, from EzBizPartner, 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 EzBizPartners recommendations.
How It Works
For example, OpenMFG and EzBizPartner 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.
OpenMFG 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 OpenMFGs 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 OpenMFG 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 dont always
have time to focus on at the office.
In the final analysis, says Moline Bearings president, the most important thing that
OpenMFG 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 OpenMFG
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 OpenMFG calls Software for the
rest of us.
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