HOLLAND ? A West Michigan manufacturer turned a bad experience with off-the-shelf Enterprise Resource Planning systems into a business opportunity.
When Fogg Filler looked to buy an ERP system and realized none of the available solutions fit its needs, it set loose an internal team to develop a system that worked for the company, said Todd Kemme, engineering manager at the company.
Today, that team has morphed into a separate entity, Smooth Logics, which began beta testing its custom ERP software suite a couple of months ago. Smooth Logics originally created the software for its parent company, which designs and manufactures rotary filling systems for the liquids industry.
Earlier this year, Smooth Logics began rolling out its countERPart system at two West Michigan companies, Automation Specialists Inc. in Holland and Allied Engineering Inc. in Zeeland. Both are trying out Smooth Logics? countERPart suite to manage projects and resources through every department, while integrating with SolidWorks, a popular 3-D design software.
Fogg Filler remains the first customer for countERPart, said Kemme, noting that he and his team of 17 engineers crafted the product to fit Fogg Filler?s needs as a specialized engineering company.
?The Smooth Logics group started writing engineering software for engineers to develop products in SolidWorks 3-D CAD,? Kemme said. ?We use it to manage our ordering and have built the rest of the company?s needs around it.?
He said it?s a good fit for a company similar to Fogg Filler that doesn?t do repetitive manufacturing.
?Our customers want custom machines to do a specific job,? he said. ?But then how do you track production? How do you know which engineer to go back to for fixes? Now our engineers can look at a web page and see all the engineers who are working on a product. They can see the status of parts ordered. Plus the guys on the shop floor now have been asked to merge the data on computers. Before, they were hands on, but not with the computers.?
Kemme estimates Fogg Filler?s engineering staff has become a third more efficient with countERPart.
?I have 14 mechanical design-engineers,? he said. ?I?d have to have another five on staff if we weren?t running this software.?
One of Kemme?s engineers, Lon Eding, said countERPart has taken a lot of confusion out of the design process. Previously, when he would order parts, he?d have to type out an email to order the parts and then apply the machine number for tracking. Now he builds his 3-D model in CAD, clicks on the ERP software, assigns a number for the machine to assemble and countERPart keeps track of the entire process, including assigning a due date, which he can override if he thinks the project will take more time.
?It cuts way back on mistakes,? Eding said. ?It gives me a good record of what I did and posts that record in front of me on the computer screen.?
Smooth Logics? countERPart sells for $4,985 a seat, plus a $985 per license renewal fee each year thereafter. Service and upgrade fees are separate. Also available is a concurrent licensing model that, for instance, would allow a customer to buy 10 licenses and share countERPart among 100 computers. Only 10 users could work on the ERP software at a given time.
