Nour Trading has manufactured professional painting tools in Waterloo, Canada since the company's inception in 1978. With warehouses at key distribution facilities across Canada and Europe, Nour is becoming the vendor of choice in paint applicators and related products world-wide.

In the mid 1980's Nour implemented a small Inventory Tracking System to assist them in management of their company. “Being a paint brush manufacturer, we carry a lot of inventory.” Says Patty Austin, Vice President of Nour Trading. “We needed a system that would help us manage our inventory levels.” As their company grew, so did their system requirements. “Although the system handled MRP, it didn't help us manage the cost of our inventory. We found it very rigid, and getting the reports we needed from the system was not possible. In short, the software was becoming old, starting to degrade and it was no longer reliable.” Patty continued.

Nour began to search the market for a system that would handle their growing needs. They wanted an 'off the shelf' repetitive manufacturing system, that had a strong local presence. According to Patty, “We looked at a number of systems, and came up with a short list of three vendors. VISUAL Manufacturing software met our system requirements, but what really made the decision for us was the positive feedback we received from the VISUAL users. Shop 9000 provided us with a list of over 300 local VISUAL users, and we independently went on site visits, and spoke to many companies. We received positive reports from every one we contacted.”

The success of Nour's implementation was a direct result of proper planning, a dedicated team, and lots of hard work. They defined their priorities up front, and then took the time to really learn how the system worked. “The talent of the Shop 9000 team was exceptional.

They really knew the software and the manufacturing process. With their expertise, we developed an implementation plan that met our objectives. With the scope defined, we then set aside the time, and made sure everyone knew what they were responsible for.” adds Patty.

In less than five months, Nour Trading was running on the VISUAL system, and they are meeting their original objectives. According to Patty, “Since implementing the system, our inventory costs are precise and verifiable. In today's competitive market, cost control is critical to success. We are able to prevent over stock and out of stock situations, and in general we are making better business decisions.”

For Patty, the implementation process went beyond just installing the system. They were interested in finding ways to streamline their processes and become more efficient.

“Recording the work completed (with the associated inventory and labour transactions that were required) was a very time consuming process to record in the VISUAL system each day. Jeff Porter automated this entire process with a COM object, which enables us to simply enter the quantity of work completed against a work order. The system then generates all of the inventory and labor ticket transactions automatically. This is a huge time saver.”

Nour also took this as an opportunity to change some of their business practices. Patty continued, “We wanted to make a fresh start, so we really analyzed our legacy data before bringing it into the new system. We also created all new engineering masters based on how we currently wanted to run the business. The Shop 9000 team really streamlined this data conversion process, and saved us a tremendous amount of time and manual effort.”

For Nour, the success of their system implementation is an ongoing process. “You can't just put in a system and then say you're done. It's all about 'continuous improvement', says Patty. “You have to own the project, take responsibility for the implementation, and test everything to make sure you're getting the results you want.”