Fusion Storm
Fusion Storm is a distribution and service company. They are a leading provider of technology services, including hardware & software sales, hosting services, remote monitoring and equipment service contracts.
Fusion Storm uses NDS applications for sales quoting, planning, procurement and service contract and financial management.
NDS and Fusion Storm partnered to develop and deploy a fully integrated web application to provide an entire CRM life cycle solution, including prospect management, contact management, sales forecasting, sales quoting and management of equipment service contracts, including customer-owned asset tracking, billing and renewals. The web application is their primary gateway into the NDS application suite.
Thoroughbred Fulfillment
Thoroughbred Fulfillment is an order fulfillment firm providing a variety of value-added services for over a dozen large clients. The primary activity is the shipment of literature, fabric samples, and amenities, along with some product assembly. All orders are shipped the same day. Thoroughbred operates in a very competitive field and must operate on fixed contract revenues with narrow margins. NDS has worked with Thoroughbred to fine-tune their order entry and material handling processes, reducing the cost and improving the speed of processing and shipping each order. NDS makes it possible for Thoroughbred to manage each client operation independently, satisfying a diverse set of sales and accounting reporting needs required by each client. This advantage has allowed Thoroughbred to aggressively seek new business in areas where their competitors can not.
Pitt Plastics
Pitt Plastics began to manufacture auto headliners over 30 years ago. Today they have expanded into the manufacture and distribution of many product lines, including a variety of private label products and FDA approved food service items. From their single plant beginning, they have grown to now occupy facilities in three states.
They use NDS applications primarily for financial data processing. They have a home-grown Oracle based manufacturing system which supports their plant operations. NDS connector APIs form the backbone of the processes which bring operational data (such as shipments) into the financial application for invoicing. They enjoy the best of both worlds – a manufacturing system which they have grown to fit them like a glove over many years, and world class financial management software from NDS.
Reid Entities is a dominant manufacturer, retailer and distributor of over 100,000 industrial tools and safety products to almost half a million customers. Implementation of NDS applications has streamlined their order entry, purchasing, and materials handling processes , yielding substantial improvements in service level and inventory turns while lowering lead times, order processing time, and investment. Especially dramatic is the significant increase in material which is cross-docked from receiving to shipping, eliminating a large number of inventory “touches”.
A high percentage of orders are now shipped within a couple hours of being placed. Improved processes allowed significant staff reductions in order entry and purchasing, as well as the elimination of an expensive automated inventory carousel, while increasing the number and value of orders shipped without increasing warehouse staff.
This competitive edge has allowed Reid to grow vertically, establishing a retail store chain, an e-commerce storefront, and expand their make-to-order custom tool manufacturing division. Reid has diversified operations with the acquisition of two ETO manufacturing divisions, one devoted to commercial signs, the other to snow removal equipment. Both divisions rely on the powerful product configuration capabilities of the application.
The multi-enterprise capabilities of NDS applications allows Reid to manage all of their operations in a single system both financially and operationally, while ensuring that transactions occur in the correct environment. Reid Entities use every aspect of the NDS application suite. As Reid continues to grow, they can rely on NDS to handle their information needs.
Established in 1952, Duro Dyne Corporation has evolved into the leading manufacturer of sheet metal accessories and equipment for the heating, ventilating, and air conditioning industry. Over the span of the last 50 years, Duro Dyne has expanded its plant locations and now employs over 200 people in the US and Canada.
For more than ten years, Duro Dyne has used NDS applications for inventory control, manufacturing, planning (including MRP and MPS), procurement and financial management, and is now rolling out a full service bi-lingual e-commerce application from NDS. As Duro Dyne expands its reach, NDS applications are ready and able to handle the load.
Brock Tool
Brock Tool is a premier supply organization for construction equipment. This multi-million dollar powerhouse attributes their success to their ability to effectively sell and market their products directly to general contracting companies and equipment suppliers. Their sales and ordering processes allow their customers to make tool and equipment purchases directly from their trucks and offices enabling real-time order fulfillment and billing.
Contractors are able to place orders directly through a web browser interface that get sent directly to Brock Tool without having to go through multiple levels of requisition request and order fulfillment personnel. The rules for allowed purchases are built in and maintained by their own purchasing professionals and supervisory staff.
At the back end, in Brock Tool's Baltimore office, is the NDS applications installation. It manages not only their B2B operations, but also a retail store and all of their operational and financial processes.
The Cummins Industrial Center business unit of the Cummins Engine Company has been using NDS Applications systems to help them since 1989.
The CIC Custom Machining System accepts customer and shop orders from a legacy mainframe system each night and communicates inventory movements back to the legacy system in real time via RPC calls managed by NDS Xephr as operators report shop floor activity to the NDS system. The fabrication shop planners rely heavily on the work order management features of NDS to achieve extremely high on time customer order shipments.
The CIC Parts Broadcast System is used to manage the delivery of Cummins tubes and other critical engine hardware to Cummins plants worldwide. This implementation of the NDS sales order management application enjoys the highest on time delivery and customer satisfaction record of any parts delivery system in Cummins.
The CIC Material Delivery System manages the flow of all materials to the 30 liter, 19 liter and V903 engine lines. The application is a blend of NDS Xephr and NDS Oracle forms applications used for Kitting, Engine On Time Delivery verification, Right First Time recording and mixed model engine scheduling in an very fluid environment where customers can change their requirements at any time before their engine is lineset.
Cummins uses its wireless network to support portable scanners (running NDS PocketXephr) and truck and tugger mounted touch screens (running Xephr applications in a browser) to deploy these systems to the actual point of use, almost eliminating the use of paper on the shop floor. All of the NDS applications at Cummins connect to and remotely maintain the corporate business system data using Xephr enabled RPC (remote procedure call) technology.
John Sterling Corp
John Sterling Corporation has been a leader in manufacturing of shelf systems and brackets, closet, garage and basement organization products and door hardware since 1931. They have a 138,000 square foot manufacturing facility located in Richmond, Illinois, two California based subsidiary companies (Cox and Chaparral) and a joint venture with Guardian Mirror and Shower Doors. The California companies manufacture, assemble and distribute one of the most complete lines of wardrobe doors and bath enclosures available on the market today. In addition, they also have manufacturing facilities in Mexico.
The majority of their sales orders, especially those from their larger customers (Home Depot, Lowes and Menards), are submitted via EDI. Much of their manufacturing is accomplished using the Repetitive Production Scheduling and Reporting module. They plan for customer orders and forecasts using Master Production Scheduling (MPS) and Material Requirements Planning (MRP). A great deal of their business is driven by requirements for rigid on time delivery (measured right down to the hour of the day) in a market where failure means facing severe financial penalties.
Their California subsidiaries use NDS application product configurator in conjunction with EDI to intelligently configure orders for custom shower enclosures, and send them straight to manufacturing for fulfillment. John Sterling Corporation uses the full range of NDS applications to effectively manage all of their diverse businesses.
Chatleff Controls
Chatleff manufactures heating and cooling components for the air conditioning industry. Operates from two facilities, including one located inside the Lockhart unit of the Texas prison system.
Chatleff Controls uses NDS applications for inventory control, order entry and shipping, planning, procurement and financial management. They use MPS to drive their flow manufacturing processes from sales forecasts, and have used the low cost customization options available in the NDS Xephr toolkit to provide streamlined forecasting, manufacturing order release and routing maintenance capabilities.
Alto Products Corp. is the oldest and largest independently owned and operated clutch plate and automatic transmission parts manufacturer in the world. They are an ISO certified manufacturer servicing markets around the world. Their expertise lies in the complete design and manufacturing of bonded friction materials, stamped steel separator reaction discs, brake bands and gasket & seal kits. Capabilities include bonding, stamping, laser cutting, CNC machining, broaching, engineering, in-house tooling and design services.
Over a billion Alto clutch plates have been installed in Automotive, Heavy Duty, Hi-Performance, Marine and Motorcycle applications in the past fifty years.
Alto uses NDS applications for inventory control, manufacturing, planning, procurement and financial management of all six of their facilities, including Alto Mexico. Alto's special needs easily satisfied by the applications are co-product planning and manufacture control and the assembly of large containerized orders from multiple sites into consolidated orders for overseas shipment.
Alto are now in the early stages of deploying web applications provided by NDS to improve customer service and provide their widely distributed sales team with sophisticated sales support tools connected directly to the corporate data store.
Wisconsin Drapery Supply
Wisconsin Drapery Supply is a full service fabricator and distributor of custom window shades and verticals. The company is a major distributor of Graber and Kirsch drapery hardware and a full-line, preferred fabricator of Graber custom products. The company serves most of the upper Midwest from its home office and production facility in Pewaukee, Wisconsin and two satellite warehouse/showroom locations.
The company has traditionally struggled when configuring sales orders for custom window shades and verticals. What appears to be a fairly simple product, in actuality has a large amount of validation required to insure that what the customer is ordering can actually be fabricated and operate properly. Such things as size dependencies; operator location and even color selection can result in an order for a custom blind that cannot be manufactured. Prior to implementing the NDS Systems ERP application, the company estimated that up to 40% of the sales orders for custom blinds could not be fabricated as originally configured.
The logic resident in the NDS applications product configurator was deployed using NDS Xephr architecture. Additional business logic was added to address some industry specific pricing requirements, as well as size dependent validation rules. The result is a fully customized, web-based order entry and product configurator that is unique in the industry. Wisconsin Drapery’s customer service representatives and their customers are both able to utilize the web-based application to generate sales quotes and orders on-line, and be assured that what is ordered can be made.
John Graber, President, said that in addition to the web order entry, the company is reaping tremendous benefits by utilizing many of the standard features that are a part of the NDS ERP application, such as color lot tracking, automatic batch shipping and production tracking.
