At a time when commodity manufacturing is migrating to countries with unbeatably low labor costs, how can a U.S. manufacturer set itself apart? Northwire Inc., a wire and cable manufacturer based in Osceola, WI, found an answer: shift from high-volume manufacturing to smaller runs of more complex, highly customized products-and do it faster, more efficiently, and more profitably than the competition.

Driven to provide superior customer service, Northwire always looks for ways to introduce new, customized products to meet the specific needs of the medical and specialty industrial markets it serves. As a result, the company is continually improving and customizing its electrical cordage and cable offerings, which are used in environments ranging from mundane to arcane. For example, one of Northwire's newer cables, which works under extremely hot or cold conditions, was recently combined with special de-icers to help save whales trapped under a huge sheet of ice off Alaska's coast.

By 1996, Northwire's growing customer base and ongoing new product innovations had created some underlying administrative challenges. The company was running its operations with paper-based systems including AutoCAD, three-ring binders, Microsoft Excel, and Word. Customer orders, production work orders, scheduling, production reports and inventory had become unmanageable. Work orders had to be walked from machine to machine. Fortunately, Northwire had the foresight to realize it needed to automate its processes and invest in some sophisticated underlying technology to help run its operations. Northwire's IT department made a list of 156 different Enterprise Resource Planning/Manufacturing Resource Planning packages and investigated them exhaustively. Tom Heitman, Northwire's Systems Analyst, was attracted to the AXIOM Enterprise Resource Management Software from AXIS Computer Systems, Inc. Just as Northwire works diligently to specialize its products to meet each customer's needs. Heitman appreciated that AXIS understood his business and had designed its Enterprise Management system for the wire and cable industry. Heitman quickly realized Northwire would benefit greatly from the industry specific functionality and the underlying Progress Software technology powering the AXIS application.

Creating A 'Shared Brain' for the Company
In 1997, Northwire began implementing the AXIOM application. "We took a giant leap, but the benefits were immediate," says Gary Beckmann, Northwire's controller. First and most dramatically, everything happened much more quickly. Suddenly everyone could see what was happening within Northwire; it was as if the company had a shared brain, Beckmann said. Every work center had a PC, which meant that everyone-customer service representatives, schedulers, machinists, production supervisors, inventory control, purchasing-could easily access all the data relevant to their jobs. Increased speed translated immediately into competitive advantage.

"We're now getting product out the door faster," says Beckmann. "From the time the call comes in, we're able to pull it faster, dock it faster, schedule it onto the floor faster, order materials faster, and move it from process to process on the floor faster. The implementation of AXIOM has taken days off our former process. That is a key competitive advantage, because now we are ahead of our competition," Beckmann says.

Data for Analysis: Boosting Efficiency and Profitability
AXIOM has given Northwire instant access to an enormous amount of data on its production processes. "Before, when there were pieces of data we wanted, we would have to assign someone to go through boxes of material," says Beckmann. "The manual task was unreal. Now it's all there at our fingertips as a byproduct of everyday production."

Machinists merely enter start and stop time and production footages for each order. From that information, production supervisors and managers can easily analyze and compare run rates, scrap ratios, and other performance measures for each operator, shift, machine, compound, and so on. With this in-depth business analysis, Northwire is continuously improving efficiency and performance.

"We're able to analyze profitability by product. We're able to analyze scrap rate monthly and weekly. And having accurate cost data for each product right at our fingertips means we can quote faster and more competitively," says Beckmann. Beyond product improvements, the system also is providing internal benefits. "We can immediately evaluate any effort to possibly improve. We're now looking at how to build a better pay package to reward employee efficiency," says Beckmann.

ROI: Staying Ahead In A Shifting Market
By using the AXIS solution, Northwire has gained a competitive advantage in an increasingly demanding global market. "Our market changed about the same time we were putting AXIOM in place," explains Heitman. "Had we not implemented the AXIS solution, we would not have been able to keep up. We're making more customized, complex products than we made in the past, and we're doing it more efficiently-with no additional effort."

Beckmann adds that the investment has paid off many times over. "We couldn't be doing this without the software we have today," he says. "We just couldn't be. We're definitely more profitable because of it. It's enabled us to grow significantly without adding more administrative and support staff. It's given us short lead times and quick quoting, which matter a lot to our customers. And it enabled us to produce more complex, custom products, which are more profitable."

Into the future with AXIS and Progress
Today, Northwire is looking forward to taking advantage of AXIS' e/Suite offering. Based on the Progress OpenEdge e-business platform, e/Suite will allow Northwire customers to track orders online, without ever having to pick up the phone. Northwire lets AXIS worry about functionality and technology. The company remains focused on serving its customers and producing quality product-all the while easily outpacing its competitors.

"We're able to do all this because of the AXIS solution," says Beckmann. "They took us from the stone age to the front of the line.