Northern Manufacturing Featured in Modern Metals

A recent article in the popular manufacturing trade publication Modern Metals featured Northern Industrial Manufacturing’s transition to ERP (enterprise resource planning) software.

That piece, entitled “Northern Industrial Manufacturing Purchases ERP System to Manage Documents, Enhance Productivity” highlighted how state-of-the-art IQMS software enhanced external customer touch points, eased document creation and improved efficiency.

In the article, NIM VP Jeff Hohlfeldt describes how IQMS’ solution boosts our company’s ability to accurately monitor and maintain inventory more attuned to work in process and incoming orders. Jeff is quoted as saying: “IQMS allows us to understand what our inventory is and helps us balance production needs by knowing what is available in our inventory.”

“The primary reason that we selected IQMS was because, in our business, we make millions of parts with tolerances that are about one-tenth of a human hair,” says Hohlfeldt. “However, when it came time to ship those parts, we struggled with getting the shipping documentation correct. For example, our struggle prior to implementing ERP was in the EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) transmission, which requires thousands of characters to be manually inputted, communicating all of the pertinent details of the shipment. If any one of those characters were incorrect, it caused the transmission to be rejected. This same principle applies to packing slips, labels, invoices and bill of ladings.”

How IQMS ERP Improves Efficiency

Steve Bieszczat, the chief marketing officer at IQMS, described the features and capabilities Northern realized with the IQMS package as: “seamless connection of the front office with the shop floor and the combination of traditional ERP functionality with manufacturing execution system (MES) functionality into a single code base and database.”

The benefits, Bieszczat goes on to say are real-time visibility of the business that no other company can achieve without extensive, and expensive, integration efforts.

Our ERP system has helped Northern Industrial Manufacturing increase productivity and throughput, decrease paperwork, eliminate downtime, reduce scrap parts, and lower inventory and labor costs—thereby also returning higher profit margins.

CLICK HERE: to read the entire article from Modern Metals