Jeff Craig Chooses e-Kanban by Datacraft Solutions
Ice plays an integral role in the foodservice, hospitality, supermarket and healthcare industries. It cools our carbonated beverages and bar drinks. It keeps supermarket fish and produce fresh and appetizing. It supports hospital patient care and rehabilitation therapies. Every facility mentioned above has at least one piece of ice making, ice storage, or ice dispensing equipment.
(PRWEB) February 22, 2005
Ice plays an integral role in the foodservice, hospitality, supermarket and healthcare industries. It cools our carbonated beverages and bar drinks. It keeps supermarket fish and produce fresh and appetizing. It supports hospital patient care and rehabilitation therapies. Every facility mentioned above has at least one piece of ice making, ice storage, or ice dispensing equipment. For over 50 years, Follett Corporation has led the industry in designing and manufacturing high quality, innovative ice storage bins, ice storage and transport systems, ice and water dispensers and ice and beverage dispensers for the foodservice, healthcare and supermarket industries. FollettÂ’s headquarters and state-of-the art manufacturing facility are located in Easton, PA.
Jeff Craig, a Senior Purchasing Agent, with Follett Ice shared how reducing inventory was to the central to company’s operation. “During 2004 one of our major objectives was to remove excess inventory from the work cells and drive them back to a central location, where they would await demand. With the decrease in available floor space and our internal success with “pull”, it seemed to be a natural progression to seek electronic kanban pull solutions.” Craig worked with other Purchasing Agents in the organization, based on years of experience in manufacturing, planning, and procurement, to develop a comprehensive “wish list” for a kanban system.
Craig noted that, “The evaluation process of Datacraft Solutions (www. datacraftsolutions. com), e-kanban product Signum, took us about 2.5 months in all. The components of evaluation were to first understand the product. What will the product do; and just as important, what it won't do. Next, we asked the question, is this product useful to our organization? We then want to talk to an actual user. Seeing the system up and running was a major component to my recommendation. We then needed to evaluate our ability to support this implementation from a people resource perspective.
Craig saw the integration with their Epicor’s Avante ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) business system as a critical component. “It is unlikely we would have moved forward without a complete integration,” according to Craig. Product distinction in Quality Procurement/e-Kanban:
The big difference between the Datacraft system and the Follett Ice home grown system was the consistency Datacraft Solutions provides. Each time Follett Ice expanded their home grown system, the company was forced to add small tweaks that make each one unique. The ERP system being used did not communicate with the ERP system in the way that Datacraft Solutions does.
According to Jeff Craig the real ROI benefits of the Datacraft Solutions implementation are:
$150K inventory reduction = 57% IRR for 3 years and 71% IRR for 5 years. These calculations leave out the people time investment.
According to Sam Bayer, President of Datacraft Solutions, “Follett Ice using our e-kanban procurement solution represents a tremendous commitment to a lean manufacturing process.”
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