SYSPRO Case Study

• 应用基础设施与中间件 - 数据交换与集成
• 功能应用 - 企业资源规划系统 (ERP)

• 航天
• 汽车
• 电子产品

• 采购
• 质量保证

• 库存管理
• 自动化制造系统
• 预测性维护

• 系统集成
• 培训

Stimac’s initial efforts were devoted to growing sales, and within two years, the company had outgrown its 1,500 sq. ft. bay and relocated to a 5,000 sq. ft. facility equipped with multiple rows of precision CNC equipment. A second shift was added in 1994, and a third shift established in 1995. The close of 1995 saw the move to a new 11,000 sq. ft. facility and the addition of much-needed office personnel. What had started out as a part-time hobby now required a much larger staff and the need for better information in order to secure repeat orders. As Yvonne Stimac, Metal Essence Operations Manager, explains, “As far as technology goes, the shop floor was always state-of-the-art. We just had to update the office side to keep up with customer requirements. We had started doing some production for the automotive industry and became aware of the need for documentation and traceability to secure repeat business.”

Metal Essence, based in Sanford, Fla., is proof that the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and flourishing in America. The company began operations in a residential garage in 1986, much like Hewlett-Packard, another renowned high technology company that also had similar origins. At the time, founder Al Stimac was an executive for a leading Florida-based electronics manufacturer. In his post, he witnessed the huge volume of high technology business being purchased from other states, so he established a personal goal of making his adopted state, Florida, a high-technology resource. Consequently, he formed Metal Essence, a precision metals and plastics fabricator that today specializes in high-quality, close-tolerance machining for the electronics, automotive, telecommunications, medical and aerospace industries. As with many individuals starting new ventures, Stimac was unsure that his fledging company would get “off-the-ground.” Initially, Metal Essence had no open lines of credit nor investors, so Stimac treated the new venture as more or less of a hobby and chose to retain his full-time executive post. Knowing the value of quality in business, his first purchase for the new endeavor was a state-of-the-art CNC turning machine. It wasn’t until 1992 that a rising sales curve at Metal Essence convinced Stimac that his “hobby” was a viable concern and one that required his undivided managerial expertise to achieve new levels of growth. Stimac’s “hobby” had now become a full-time venture, and he assumed the role of Metal Essence President.

The company called in John Edgar, now CEO of an Orlando-based software consultancy. Edgar assessed the needs of Metal Essence and suggested the firm take a look at SYSPRO enterprise software, a modular, integrated Enterprise Resource Planning solution. After seeing a demonstration of the SYSPRO solution, the Stimacs were convinced that it would fill their current needs, and, equally as important, also had the scalability to accommodate future growth. The latter was a significant consideration in the firm’s justification of such a major purchase. Another strong selling point was the software’s ability to support EDI (Electronic Data Integration), a growing requirement of the company’s expanding automotive customer base. The EDI module gives companies the capability to rapidly exchange large batches of business transactions automatically and electronically in the traditional standardized formats between trading partners to support JIT (Just-in-Time) ordering objectives.

• Almost immediately after installing the SYSPRO software, Metal Essence experienced notable improvements. The first two areas to show bursts of efficiency were job scheduling and purchasing. Explains Mrs. Stimac, “I could look at a process and know the breakdown costs in order to assess the profitability of the operation. I could determine the cycle times and where reductions had to be made.” In fact, she says, it was the ability to add these operational efficiencies that helped the company gain repeat as well as new business. “We simply passed on the savings to the customer,” she says.
• At the same time, with a detailed history of purchases, she was able to streamline the firm’s purchasing operations, making more efficient and timely buys and securing volume discounts where possible.
• Perhaps the greatest contribution that the SYSPRO software has made to the growth of Metal Essence is the ability it gave the company to better leverage the lean manufacturing model. The real-time nature of the SYSPRO software provided the operational infrastructure by which Metal Essence could establish strategic guidelines throughout the company’s supply chain and access the most current data for more effective and efficient decision-making. The software also gave the company the ability to maximize existing resources and eliminate non value-added activities, enabling Metal Essence to improve profits by producing to customer demand rather than tying up large sums in raw materials inventories.

• Metal Essence now employs 75 people.
• The company is approaching global revenues in excess of $10 million dollars.
• The firm was doing $300,000 at the time it implemented the SYSPRO solution.