In late 1998, Spinrite found themselves in a position shared by many manufacturers. They were running an old legacy system with software that was not Y2K compliant. They knew they would have to invest in a new system and so they embarked on the process of investigating the systems available on the market.

“Being a textile manufacturer, we first looked at textile based applications” says John Verwey, Engineering Manager from Spinrite. “Through our research, we found that although the textile based systems used the jargon that we were comfortable with, they were all still based on the AS400 platform. We wanted an PC based system.” continues Verwey.

After close to a year of evaluations, they chose to implement VISUAL Manufacturing. “We were impressed with the VISUAL system. It offered the functionality we needed, and it was Windows friendly. It was also very consistent from screen to screen, making us feel that it would be easy to learn and operate.” adds Verwey

Within four months Spinrite was operating live on the new system. According to Verwey, “Our main concern was to keep our operation running. Integrated EDI, customer order entry, labor ticket entry, shipping, material resource planning (MRP) and financial integration were our key success factors.”

The initial implementation was a tremendous success. “Our team was focused and dedicated, and the Shop 9000 implementation team was a tremendous support. Using Shop 9000's implementation methodology, “Swift TRAC”, we came in both on time and on budget!” says Verwey.

After running VISUAL for about six months, Spinrite decided to upgrade their database to Oracle. “We do a tremendous amount of transactions.” Says Verwey. “Starting with one piece of yarn, we can end up with 120 different finished products. At the present time we have over 3500 products. With large clients like Zellers and Walmart, each transaction averages 3,000 - 5,000 lines. In a very short period of time, our VISUAL database was the largest one currently supported by Shop 9000.”

Spinrite continued using the VISUAL system for the next three years. During this time their business changed substantially. Spinrite purchased two other knitting companies in Canada and they were doing substantially more business through EDI with Walmart USA. As well, a lot of people that were there during the initial implementation had moved on. They now have a new finance management team (CFO and CEO). As well, the product champion who had spearheaded the initial implementation got married and left on maternity leave.

Spinrite also changed the way they did business. In 1999, they were set up as a department type company, with inventories being maintained at each department. Today, Spinrite are running a line-based operation with four production lines. They 'make to forecast' and therefore substantial amounts of inventory are maintained in each of their lines.

At this point, the efficiency of the VISUAL system began to erode - primarily because no changes were made to the system to support the changes in their business. The president was demanding reports -- like actual vs standard cost and value of inventory which were virtually impossible to get from the system as they initially set up the system with actual costing. Month end reporting took over a month to generate. In short, the people started to lose confidence in the system, and so they started to stray from the system and created their own spreadsheets to get the information they needed.

In late 2001 Spinrite began to re-evaluate their system requirements. At the time of the initial implementation, the finance group was basically in charge. Because this was the first MRP system at Spinrite, the manufacturing side wasn't really ready for it. They went along with it from an accounting perspective but they didn't invest in it for their own needs. They knew that VISUAL system (as it stood) wasn't providing the information they wanted. They also weren't using it to assist in the manufacturing process, for example, they weren't using the scheduler, and the information in the MRP system wasn't reliable. They needed to change something, so once again they began looking at the market place.

Initially, they found that the other 'textile based' systems had caught up technically and were now offering windows based solutions. But internally they also realized that the staff was comfortable with VISUAL for transaction management. At this point, they began talking to other VISUAL users, including Jane Family Foods. “We started to realize that the problems we were experiencing weren't a result of deficiencies in the software, but rather our application of it. We weren't using VISUAL to its potential.” says Verwey.

Spinrite then revisited their system requirements and came up with a new list of requirements including:

• Faster month end reporting
• Better management of forecasting
• Better control over inventory
• Access to reliable reports including: gross margin, and standard cost variance

Then they decided to take another look at VISUAL. “Shop 9000 was very receptive to our call.” says Verwey. “Mr. Heaton came to our office and spent a ½ day discussing our needs. He proposed a three-phase approach to the implementation. First, he assigned two senior consultants (one manufacturing and one accounting) to each spend a day doing a full audit of our system. We needed to see what was working and what wasn't.”

“Next, we needed to examine the technical configuration. We hadn't upgraded the software or changed our hardware since the initial implementation. We were still running VISUAL 5.22, and with our volumes, this was something we needed to investigate.”

“Once all the information was gathered, Shop 9000 provided a detailed project plan and proposal for a re-implementation of the system. We could never implement a different solution for the amount quoted by Shop 9000, and we were by and large pleased with VISUAL based on our initial implementation requirements.”

“We realized that for the past 3 years, we had basically been running one big pilot, and now was the time to make those ‘tweaks’ to the system”.

“We changed to standard costing, and began the process of redefining all of our BOMS to represent what we were doing today. Next, we needed to define a process to ensure the accuracy of our forecasts. In the past, we had created one huge forecast. We realized that it was never correct. Having only 20 large customers, we decided to create individual forecasts for each of these customers and then consolidate them into a master forecast.”

“Next, we upgraded to the latest release of the software, and when we were ready, we set a 'go-live date'. Our database was successfully converted and after three months of hard work, we were running our new system.”

When evaluating the success of this re-implementation, we looked back at the list of requirements.

Faster month end reporting
Today Spinrite are seeing accurate financials within 2 ½ weeks of the month end. This represents a savings of over two weeks per month, and they expect this to improve.

Better management of forecasting
With forecasts being done on customer-by-customer bases, the numbers are more accurate. “The VISUAL system works beautifully if the forecasts are good, and now with accurate information being fed into the MRP system we are better able to manage bottlenecks and throughput.”

Better control over inventory
By re-aligning the system to conform to line based instead of department based inventory, Spinrite now has a much better handle on their inventory levels.

Access to reliable reports including: gross margin, and standard cost variance
Since the re-implementation, Spinrite are driving all of their reports right off the system. They no longer need to rely on independent spreadsheets. Today they are seeing reports like:

• Weekly Gross Margin
• Weekly Closed Orders
• Standard Cost Variance
• Value of Inventory

Spinrite are also now using the Scheduler, which has given them even greater control over the Shop floor.

Looking into the future, Verwey is very excited about the potential. “We're planning to use the system to answer 'what if' scenarios like: What would happen if we got $100,000 more business from Walmart USA? Because our database is reliable, the system would be able to identify if there would be additional equipment or shift requirements. This kind of information is invaluable in business.”

To Verwey, protecting their investment in VISUAL is a continual process. For other manufacturers embarking on this journey, he offers these recommendations:

1. Revisit your implementation often.
   As your business processes change; consider the implications on your system. You may need to invest time in your system to re-align it to your business.
2. Keep your system up-to-date.
   Look at the new releases. There are likely many significant improvements that would greatly enhance your operation.
3. Define internal policies and procedures.
   Spend the time to document your in-house procedures. Employees come and go, and you want to make sure that the knowledge isn't lost in the transition.
4. Attend training classes.
   A lot of training is done during the implementation process. By the time you're live, much of this knowledge is forgotten. Invest in the 'refresher classes' to make sure you're not missing anything critical.
5. Attend the Shop 9000 User Group Meetings and Product Workshops.
   These are free services being offered by Shop 9000. You're bound to pick up a tip or two from the information sessions, but more importantly, you'll be able to network with many other companies who are using VISUAL. You'll be able to compare your approach to others, and bounce ideas off one another.