Download PDF
SMC Electric Supply Creates Seamless Workflows between Disparate Data Silos with Informer Dashboards
Technology Category
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Visualization
- Functional Applications - Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP)
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
- Sales & Marketing
- Warehouse & Inventory Management
Use Cases
- Inventory Management
- Predictive Maintenance
- Supply Chain Visibility
Services
- System Integration
- Training
The Challenge
SMC is a private, family-owned corporation headquartered in Springfield, Missouri with 14 locations in Missouri and Kansas. The company distributes the industry’s top automation, data comm, electrical, industrial, pneumatics, safety and security products, typically used in manufacturing facilities, from over 250 manufacturers. When Jesse Owsley, software program manager at SMC joined the company, he quickly realized that reporting capabilities within the organization were very limited and not sufficient for business needs. SMC had multiple databases that held important data. Their business had limited reporting abilities. Staff was either making do with native application reporting, using SQL Management Studio or having an IT staff member write custom reports for users. SMC needed to enable workflows across their multiple systems including Progress/NextGen ERP, document management, proof of delivery, and CRM. It was important to tightly monitor and track orders, inventory and payables as data moved between departments. Hundreds of thousands of records must be managed and exception reporting is very important. Because the data was in disparate systems, it was challenging to efficiently spot exceptions or data discrepancies in real time that could evolve into bigger problems. For example, SMC uses Tour de Force as their CRM. Customer and product data in their ERP is highly dynamic and making changes in the ERP would easily cause discrepancies in the CRM because Tour de Force was expecting the data in a certain way. “This caused issues with user adoption and confidence in the CRM data,” said Owsley. Prior to Informer, Jesse created a spreadsheet to keep track of outlying information as he found it. This was an incredibly tedious and manual process. Accounts Payable staff at SMC were also using spreadsheets to reconcile invoices and purchase orders containing prices charged, freight, product information, etc. Prior to Informer, clerical staff had to call Buyers and manually compare spreadsheets to reconcile data, another manually tedious workflow.
About The Customer
SMC Electric Supply is a private, family-owned corporation headquartered in Springfield, Missouri, with 14 locations across Missouri and Kansas. The company specializes in distributing top-tier automation, data communication, electrical, industrial, pneumatics, safety, and security products, primarily used in manufacturing facilities. SMC sources its products from over 250 manufacturers, ensuring a wide range of high-quality offerings. The company is committed to providing exceptional service and maintaining strong relationships with its clients. SMC's workforce includes a dedicated team of professionals who manage various aspects of the business, from sales and customer service to technical support and logistics. The company places a strong emphasis on innovation and efficiency, continually seeking ways to improve its operations and better serve its customers. With a focus on leveraging technology to streamline processes and enhance data management, SMC aims to stay ahead in the competitive distribution industry. The company's commitment to excellence and customer satisfaction has made it a trusted partner for many businesses in the manufacturing sector.
The Solution
Owsley and other staff at SMC knew they needed an easier, more efficient way of accessing and managing data and workflows across the separate data sources. After a free trial, SMC soon implemented Informer and were up and running in a few days. “Including the time it took to spin up a server, install Informer, connect to the initial data sources and to do the first application training sessions via telephone, I had less than 8 man hours invested in getting my first production reports which I continue to use to this day,” said Owsley. “Setup was my number one concern, but it was very straightforward. I’m not a technical person, but I could do most of the setup and mappings myself.” Jesse recently upgraded to Informer 5 and is generating Dashboards that have created seamless workflows across the business. By connecting to the various data silos, Informer enables SMC to compare data from diverse business systems in one place. The visuals blend real-time data from multiple systems onto dynamic dashboards where he can then easily drill into underlying data in the source systems. SMC staff now can access and manage data without IT intervention. End users use Informer to run their own ad-hoc reports and Dashboards to then distribute to many others. Managers, vendors, and other staff members can view report PDFs or even Live Excel spreadsheets with Informer data, all without ever having to access the software itself. “Now SMC only needs to maintain one ERP license because they provide the access to data that the staff needs through Informer. We are saving on ERP licenses and with just that, Informer can pay for itself. Our configuration and security environment is much more manageable,” said Owsley.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
Related Case Studies.
Case Study
Remote Monitoring & Predictive Maintenance App for a Solar Energy System
The maintenance & tracking of various modules was an overhead for the customer due to the huge labor costs involved. Being an advanced solar solutions provider, they wanted to ensure early detection of issues and provide the best-in-class customer experience. Hence they wanted to automate the whole process.
Case Study
Remote Temperature Monitoring of Perishable Goods Saves Money
RMONI was facing temperature monitoring challenges in a cold chain business. A cold chain must be established and maintained to ensure goods have been properly refrigerated during every step of the process, making temperature monitoring a critical business function. Manual registration practice can be very costly, labor intensive and prone to mistakes.
Case Study
Predictive Maintenance for Industrial Chillers
For global leaders in the industrial chiller manufacturing, reliability of the entire production process is of the utmost importance. Chillers are refrigeration systems that produce ice water to provide cooling for a process or industrial application. One of those leaders sought a way to respond to asset performance issues, even before they occur. The intelligence to guarantee maximum reliability of cooling devices is embedded (pre-alarming). A pre-alarming phase means that the cooling device still works, but symptoms may appear, telling manufacturers that a failure is likely to occur in the near future. Chillers who are not internet connected at that moment, provide little insight in this pre-alarming phase.
Case Study
Aircraft Predictive Maintenance and Workflow Optimization
First, aircraft manufacturer have trouble monitoring the health of aircraft systems with health prognostics and deliver predictive maintenance insights. Second, aircraft manufacturer wants a solution that can provide an in-context advisory and align job assignments to match technician experience and expertise.
Case Study
Integral Plant Maintenance
Mercedes-Benz and his partner GAZ chose Siemens to be its maintenance partner at a new engine plant in Yaroslavl, Russia. The new plant offers a capacity to manufacture diesel engines for the Russian market, for locally produced Sprinter Classic. In addition to engines for the local market, the Yaroslavl plant will also produce spare parts. Mercedes-Benz Russia and his partner needed a service partner in order to ensure the operation of these lines in a maintenance partnership arrangement. The challenges included coordinating the entire maintenance management operation, in particular inspections, corrective and predictive maintenance activities, and the optimizing spare parts management. Siemens developed a customized maintenance solution that includes all electronic and mechanical maintenance activities (Integral Plant Maintenance).
Case Study
Hospital Inventory Management
The hospital supply chain team is responsible for ensuring that the right medical supplies are readily available to clinicians when and where needed, and to do so in the most efficient manner possible. However, many of the systems and processes in use at the cancer center for supply chain management were not best suited to support these goals. Barcoding technology, a commonly used method for inventory management of medical supplies, is labor intensive, time consuming, does not provide real-time visibility into inventory levels and can be prone to error. Consequently, the lack of accurate and real-time visibility into inventory levels across multiple supply rooms in multiple hospital facilities creates additional inefficiency in the system causing over-ordering, hoarding, and wasted supplies. Other sources of waste and cost were also identified as candidates for improvement. Existing systems and processes did not provide adequate security for high-cost inventory within the hospital, which was another driver of cost. A lack of visibility into expiration dates for supplies resulted in supplies being wasted due to past expiry dates. Storage of supplies was also a key consideration given the location of the cancer center’s facilities in a dense urban setting, where space is always at a premium. In order to address the challenges outlined above, the hospital sought a solution that would provide real-time inventory information with high levels of accuracy, reduce the level of manual effort required and enable data driven decision making to ensure that the right supplies were readily available to clinicians in the right location at the right time.
