Chatsworth Products (Epicor)
How Chatsworth Products Reduced Work in Process with Real-Time Information
“We met our SourceDay partners at an Epicor user group meeting and we saw the demo. It wasn’t long after we saw the demo that we were planning our SourceDay implementation.”
-Jonathan Peters, Director of IT at Chatsworth Products
Managing Suppliers at Scale for Risk & Reward
When Epicor announced they would no longer be supporting their supplier portal, Chatsworth made the decision to rethink how they handle supplier collaboration, both for their own sake and for their suppliers’. They made the decision to augment their ERP system’s capabilities by integrating with SourceDay.
Chatsworth was facing a number of supplier-related challenges with their Epicor ERP, all of which centered around how they were managing the process of acquiring parts and raw materials. They predominantly relied upon email, phone calls, faxes, and spreadsheets to manage supplier communication, none of which facilitated visibility or easy tracking.
Chatsworth’s IT and supply chain teams worked with SourceDay to replace the old way of doing business with a digitally transformed, streamlined process for managing parts. While Epicor offered a replacement solution for their supplier portal, the Chatsworth team did not feel it provided the scale and performance they needed to manage their suppliers and relative risk. There were also concerns about the supplier onboarding process, described by one Chatsworth team member as “painful.”
“By cleaning up our work in process, we now have more just-in-time inventory management. We’ve reclaimed about 90% of our previous warehousing space and converted it into manufacturing floor because of the way we’ve optimized our inbound materials.”
- Jonathan Peters, Director of IT at Chatsworth Products
Internal & external challenges addressed
Before
- Excess WIP inventory
cluttered the production space and led to damages - Late deliveries all had the same cause:
no supplier acknowledgement of the original order date - Managing orders and status via email
led to confusion and wasted resources
After
- WIP inventory on hand reduced
from 8-9 days to 2-3 days - Better use of production space
fuels corporate growth - Cash flows freed up
to support new acquisitions - Improved supplier management
is facilitating the process of integrating those new acquisitions with the core Chatsworth business
“Three years ago, we were living in chaos. Now, with our hyper-growth and with the new tool, I can’t remember the last time we were short a part.”
- Jonathan Peters, Director of IT at Chatsworth Products
Benefits
Actionable Information Available in Real Time
Chatsworth leverages SourceDay’s real-time capabilities to put information into the hands of decision makers both inside the company and out. This includes planners in supply chain and warehouse operations as well as multiple types of customers (distributors, integrators, and end-users), each of which needs a different type of information on a specific schedule.
SourceDay has proven to be far more than a ‘glorified email chain’ because it stores information centrally, making it easier for all parties in the supply chain to stay up to date. Because the SourceDay team handled all the heavy lifting associated with implementation, integration, supplier onboarding, and adoption, Chatsworth quickly realized the full value proposition associated with the platform. Chatsworth is 100% employee-owned, creating added incentive for everyone to inquire how they can do more for the company, gain more efficiencies, and find more time in the day for adding value.
Solutions
From Root Cause Analysis to Corrective Action
Before SourceDay, certain parts were chronically late. Each time they were short on inventory, the Chatsworth team would do a root cause analysis to uncover the problem – especially when it brought production lines to a halt. It almost always came back to the same issue; because they were relying upon email and phone calls to manage their orders, they had no way to track whether suppliers acknowledged the original order date (and they often didn’t). Now that information is not only tracked centrally by SourceDay, Chatsworth is also able to make a record of the deal price when an order involves a spot buy.
Results
Today’s Improvements Lead to Tomorrow’s Opportunities
Through increased supply chain predictability and a re-optimization of their available production space, Chatsworth Products has been able to grow their business substantially. They continue to invest in their own digital transformation, moving away from paper-based processes whenever possible.
Because the SourceDay implementation was smooth and offered additional benefits and functionality beyond their previous supplier management system, the materials and logistics team still has solid relationships with suppliers and internal customers. In fact, they plan to expand their use of SourceDay to include unlimited suppliers, more buyers, and supplier scorecards to support their quarterly business reviews, allowing performance issues to be addressed as soon as they happen rather than months later. They plan to do the same for the companies Chatsworth has recently acquired, and now that those teams have seen what the SourceDay platform can do, they are eager to come online.
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