CoorsTek is a global engineering ceramic leader with manufacturing, sales, and research facilities worldwide. They run four versions of QAD across the 20 sites that use QAD around the world.
Bob Sendek, IT Director of the Global ERP, Manufacturing Execution, and Supply Chain Portfolio at CoorsTek, explained why they were looking for a solution to help them more quickly and easily manage their sales order volume.
“We had had a large volume of sales orders, and because many of our customers send sales orders for the entire year, some of those orders can run 500+ lines.”
On top of that, we had to update due dates in the system, and we also needed to be able to link purchase orders to sales orders.”
In addition, they needed to improve the coordination of information internally. CoorsTek does a lot of buy/sell between their facilities, and they wanted to ensure that could be done easily and without duplication of efforts. They also wanted to improve communication between the sales and planning departments.
To combat the errors that can occur with a large volume of data entry, Coorstek also wanted to increase rules around data entry which QAD doesn’t enforce.
A particular area where they wanted to realize improved communication was in the buy-sell transactions between the planners, purchasers, and sales teams in the US and Japan facilities.
“The sales order and accompanying purchase order had to be keyed in separately,” said Cindy Kong, Principal Business Analyst for CoorsTek Inc. “When the quantities or due date changed, the sales and purchase orders needed to be changed. It was very hard to coordinate. QAD should be able to do this, but we have so many customizations that it was hard for QAD EMT to process.”
Cindy also explained that at the end of the year, they had to go through all the open purchase orders to coordinate with Japan and then update the revised due dates in QAD. This process could take them a week or more to accomplish. Another hurdle was that the Japan facility does not use QAD.
Using the Multiple Sales Order Data Loader has improved the coordination between the US and Japan teams and made communicating changes between the facilities easier. The US facility downloads the updated transactions from QAD to the Data Loader and sends them to the Japan facility. Likewise, Japan can send any changed information on their end to the US through the Loader to be uploaded to QAD.
“With the 32 Soft tool, we decreased the coordination time between sales orders and purchase orders by at least 60%,” says Cindy, “and the end-of-year Sales Order due date entry went from 40+ hours to 6 hours or less.”
CoorsTek also had a tough time running MRP in QAD. “As you know, MRP is driven by due dates,” Bob explains, “It was very difficult, based on the number of sales orders, to keep due dates current to drive MRP correctly. Consequently, due dates were ignored, and MRP wasn’t used. With the Multiple Sales Order tool, it is easy to keep the due date up-to-date, which keeps MRP up-to-date. We can now use MRP successfully.”
Data Loaders also allow CoorsTek to standardize processes across the globe. Using the same Data Loaders in the four environments can make Sales Order processing more standard, which they wouldn’t have been able to do without the Multi Sales Order Loader. CoorsTek has also adopted additional Loaders that help them standardize other processes throughout the company.
“We’ve also embedded validations in the Data Loaders that actually keep people from making mistakes and automate some of the information,” Bob said. “We have found that nothing is impossible when it comes to 32 Soft. We use a number of their tools, and they have been an incredible success.”
“Not only have we gained efficiency, accuracy, and consistency, everyone you talk to within our organization who uses 32 Soft tools has given good feedback.”
Along with the Multi Sales Order Data Loader, CoorsTek uses the Purchase orders, cycle counting, and forecast, and they are investigating some of the other 80+ available Data Loaders.
Find out more about Multiple Sales Order Data Loader
Watch the CoorsTek webinar about Multiple Sales Order Data Loader
