Key Takeaways:

• A $50 million steel manufacturer engaged RubinBrown to conduct an enterprise resource planning (ERP) assessment for their company.
• Their existing processes had never been improved, so they needed more than just new software to increase efficiency and profitability.
• The client selected a new ERP system that took the place of paper ledgers and numerous file cabinet backups, which were cumbersome to manage.
• After a successful ERP implementation, the new ERP system delivered an accurate and real-time cost base on which sound commercial decisions could be made to remain competitive and maximize profitability.

Client: 

A $50 million road safety and steel manufacturer selected RubinBrown to conduct and support a business optimization and transformation initiative to help the business adapt to unprecedented scale. They had recently experienced rapid growth, had outgrown their current processes, and were using outdated software.

Challenge:

RubinBrown worked to understand their current business, including why they had recently experienced significant growth in the steel industry.

This company’s revenue growth created three major concerns that RubinBrown worked to address through this process:

• They had reached the capacity of their galvanizing supplier with the current method of production and needed to improve their sales and operating planning (S&OP) and production planning to leverage every available hour at this key vendor.
• They had grown with their existing, but aging, workforce in place and simply expanded as needed with no rationalization or improvements to the way they operated.
• They had cobbled together a series of processes and systems centering around paper logs and outdated software.

Working in the realm of Departments of Transportation (DOTs) in many states presented the problem of needing to keep complete control of material certifications and conformance from raw material at the foundry to end-product delivery to the customer. This challenge necessitated a rigorous quality assurance program spanning every stage of the manufacturing process.

The staff at the company implemented a sunsetted software two decades ago, and it did not have the capability and scalability to manage the complexities of the current business. The company did attempt to implement a new ERP system on their own, but the implementation was abandoned since they did not have an in-house ERP software system expert dedicated to keeping the project on track.