A Fully Integrated Odoo System Optimizes a Manufacturing Company’s ETO Workflow
Overview
Odoo’s platform laid the foundation for ICS’ fully integrated system that optimizes its ETO and MTO workflows.
The Client
INDUSTRY:
Industrial Manufacturing
LOCATION:
Indiana, United States
CHALLENGE:
A 20+ year-old legacy system creates limitations for cost management, labor costing, materials costing, quoting, and multi-warehouse management.
InLine Cleaning Systems (ICS)
Inline Cleaning Systems is a manufacturer of parts washers that has been in business for over 40 years. It is a privately owned company that specializes in the manufacturing of conveyor or pass through washers and cleaning systems that are built to the unique specifications of each customer. ICS is part of a family of industrial manufacturing brands that includes EIS Machine & Automation and Rando Machines. ICS and its family of brands specialize in custom built machinery that is either completely customized or highly customized for the following industries:
-
Automotive
-
Construction
-
Aerospace
-
Consumer Products
-
Agriculture
Challenge #1
Locally hosted legacy systems make it difficult for multiple locations, warehouses, and brands to coordinate
Solution
A cloud based Odoo system coordinates multiple locations allowing users to access the system anywhere remotely
Challenge #2
Limited integration with CAD software SOLIDWORKS slows manufacturing and makes accessing historical designs for the quotation process difficult
Solution
Streamline the process of importing design data from SOLIDWORKS for job costing reference and automatically adjust the BOM based on changes
Challenge #3
Disjointed legacy systems create complexity for an engineer-to-order workflow and costing with limited integrations across the manufacturing process
Solution
End-to-end ETO process maximizes traceability in manufacturing workflows with job cost reports for materials and labor reported in real time
“We chose Odoo because the modern architecture was able to be highly customized to our specific needs as a manufacturing company. We expect to hit at least a 20 year time horizon on the platform.”
– Andy Wilcox | President, ICS
ICS’ Challenge
ICS specializes in industrial washers that are built to the specifications of each commercial customer. Most of the challenges they have faced in their processes are due to a 20+ year old legacy system.
Multiple Locations
Acquisition of Additional Companies Required Centralized Operations
ICS had acquired other machinery manufacturing companies located in different geographic areas from the parent company. With locally hosted legacy systems, coordinating across locations proved to be difficult and labor intensive. Managing teams, workflows, manufacturing orders, design specifications and more required manual data transfers, and with no ability to log in from off-site locations, remote access across brands was impossible.
SOLIDWORKS Integration
CAD Integration for ETO Workflow and Historical Design Costing
With limited integration between ICS’ CAD software SOLIDWORKS and their manufacturing systems, moving designs through manufacturing required many manual steps and processes that increased the chance of human error and monopolized time and labor resources. This created complexity for costing updates to the BOM with design changes and limited change management in versioning histories of a design.
In addition, accessing historical design specs for the quotation process required manual analysis of the BOM to calculate material and labor costs. This took valuable time away from the sales team and increased the chances of error in the quotation process.
Engineer-to-Order Workflows
Fully Integrated and Customized ETO Workflows Streamline Manufacturing
Disjointed legacy systems made the process of managing nearly or completely custom manufacturing orders tedious, time consuming, and difficult. With limited traceability and integration across PO, MO, SO, and invoices, processes had to be manually managed with implications across job costing, inventory management, and other BOM components
“Our engagement with Novobi was quite broad because we brought everything about our business onto the one platform and asked them to develop the engineer-to-order features from scratch.”
– Andy Wilcox | President, ICS
Novobi’s Solution
Novobi was tasked with building a modern, powerful enterprise software platform to integrate engineer-to-order processes. By combining software with cloud-based technology and data analytics, they created an innovative, efficient, and most importantly scalable solution for the client.
Novobi built upon the open source framework of Odoo, an enterprise software platform that can be expanded with custom feature development aligned to the unique needs of the client. Development encompassed several key features for a powerful, single solution. Check out the video for an overview of Novobi’s solution:
Centralized, Cloud Based System with Universal Employee Access
The solution on Odoo centralized ICS’ operations into a cloud based system with single sign on for employee access across locations. This ensured coordination over various time zones and allowed employees to remotely access the system even if they were not on the premises.
Migrating to the cloud also enabled greater integration, automation, and scalability of ICS’ system.
SOLIDWORKS Integration for Improved Quotation Process and BOM Management
Integrating SOLIDWORKS with ICS’ solution provided multiple benefits. The ability to reference historical design data with this seamless integration enabled faster and more accurate quotations for new jobs.
In addition, the SOLIDWORKS integration improved portions of the ETO workflow including straightforward versioning management and automatic updates to the BOM based on design changes.
Integrated ETO Process with Traceability
With an improved and integrated ETO workflow, ICS had full traceability of materials across PO, MO, SO, and invoices with automatic updates to inventory and the BOM based on design changes.
Since the ETO process is flexible and adaptive based on the end client’s feedback, ICS needed to update the BOM frequently during a project. With their new ETO workflow, this can be done quickly and easily with a job cost report that captures costing in real time.
“Our engagement with Novobi was quite broad because we brought everything about our business onto the one platform and asked them to develop the engineer-to-order features from scratch.”
– Andy Wilcox | President, ICS
The Novobi Approach
Novobi follows a strict implementation schedule following CMMI and Scrum frameworks with weekly sprints, ensuring that clients can expect demos and workable solutions weekly or biweekly. Novobi also follows best practices in configuration and customization to ensure the system functions correctly and protects client’s intellectual property. This approach makes it easier and more cost-effective to upgrade in the future.
Novobi's Methodology & Certifications
The Results
Novobi’s approach included migration of legacy data for the client and comprehensive training both before and after go-live of the new system. The implementation strategy utilized a standard SCRUM methodology to keep the process paced and transparent for the client with risk mitigation. A go-live checklist was created and delivered to ensure that all parts of the implementation process and project scope were addressed prior to or concurrently with roll out. As a result, hand off of the new system was seamless, and ICS was able to begin running operations on the new Odoo platform.
Check out the video to hear from Andy Wilcox about Novobi’s solution:
Want to Learn More?
Learn more about Novobi’s custom accounting application and how they adapted financial management tools for the US-market. Sign up below:
Get More Case Studies from Novobi Delivered to your inbox
Share this Case Study
