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Bonnell Industries Plows Away the Paper With Sage 100 ERP
Technology Category
- Functional Applications - Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP)
Applicable Industries
- Automotive
Applicable Functions
- Discrete Manufacturing
Use Cases
- Inventory Management
- Manufacturing System Automation
Services
- Software Design & Engineering Services
The Challenge
Bonnell Industries, a leading truck equipment distributor and manufacturer of snowplows and spreaders, was struggling with an avalanche of paperwork. The company had been using DOS-based software designed for the truck equipment industry but was still on manual systems for its manufacturing business. This made obtaining reliable financial data a nightmare. The company also faced challenges with inventory management, as it was difficult to stock the correct amount of inventory due to the long intervals between usage of certain items. Additionally, the company needed to ensure that they did not receive a truck body before the chassis or truck itself.
About The Customer
Bonnell Industries, Inc. is a leading truck equipment distributor and manufacturer of snowplows and spreaders based in Dixon, Illinois. The company was founded in 1960 by Jesse Bonnell, who recognized a need for welding broken axles on heavy-duty trucks and started Bonnell’s Welding Service. The company soon began manufacturing the forerunner of current road maintainers for gravel roads and introduced snowplows to its product mix in 1980. A modern paint facility was added in 1994, and the company started manufacturing snow- and ice-control spreaders in the mid-1990s. Today, Bonnell Industries supplies snowplows and spreaders to municipalities throughout the nation. The company has one location and employs 42 people.
The Solution
Bonnell Industries implemented Sage 100 ERP to run all daily business operations, including the general ledger, payables, receivables, payroll, invoicing, and merchandise returns. The software is used for everything from preparing quotes for customers to creating detailed financial reports. The implementation of Sage 100 ERP eliminated several hours a day of work for each person in the finance group. The company also benefited from real-time inventory, which improved accuracy and helped reduce inventory by 5 percent. Alongside Sage 100 ERP, Bonnell runs JobOps, a job operations and production software that tracks most aspects of a job in a real-time environment, from estimate to invoice. The JobOps Configurator integrates Sage 100 ERP and JobOps to improve procurement and production workflow processes.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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