Perryman Company Goes Live with AXIOM® for Production of Specialty Titanium Products

Perryman Company - the global quality leader in specialty titanium products for the aerospace, automotive, medical and recreational industries - has completed implementation of the AXIOM Enterprise Resource Management System throughout all areas of the company’s Houston, Pennsylvania headquarters and manufacturing facility. Perryman is now using AXIOM/mx Open to support virtually all of the company’s sales, production, quality, and financial management functions.

A privately held company located approximately 25 miles southwest of Pittsburgh, Perryman specializes in manufacturing titanium products, with focused manufacturing facilities producing:

• Titanium Precision Finish Coil
• Titanium Centerless Ground Bar
• Titanium Drawn Net Shapes
• Titanium Premium Fine Wire
• Titanium Hot Rolled Products

“ With AXIOM, we can now track material seamlessly from receipt through production to shipment,” states Wayne Hauge, Perryman CFO. “On-line access to inventory availability and order status has significantly improved our productivity, and enabled us to further improve customer service.”

AXIOM’s planning, scheduling, procurement, production tracking, cost management, and financial management capabilities complement Perryman’s highly automated manufacturing facilities to give Perryman a distinct competitive advantage. As stated on Perryman’s web site: “Our goal is to create world-class specialty titanium products using the latest technology in automation and processing. The benefit of our automated processes to our customers is that we're able to produce quality products with a lean workforce. This translates to cost-effective manufacturing. By integrating our facilities, we maintain short lead times and are more reactive to our markets and the needs of our customers."

Perryman selected AXIOM in 2001 to put in place an integrated management system that would support the company’s steady growth. Hauge states: “We initially looked at software packages designed to support discrete manufacturers, but were not comfortable that they would fit our business without a lot of customization. Once we looked at AXIOM, it didn’t take long for us to see that this was the right system for us. Not only was the software obviously built around the types of processes we perform in making our products, but the AXIS people clearly understood our business and our challenges. There really wasn’t a close second once we were introduced to AXIS.”
Using a phased implementation approach, the sales, procurement, and finance applications were brought up within less than eight months. Then each production area was brought up in turn over the course of about a year. These areas included in sequence: the rolling mill, then the wire, bar, net shapes, and fine wire areas.

“ AXIOM has pretty much worked ‘out of the box’ for Perryman,” adds Hauge. “We have not had to do any significant customization. While we were in the process of implementing, we did take advantage of several enhancements to the standard AXIOM product as they were developed by AXIS based on input from the customer base, but other than that its been a fairly straight-forward process of using the software as it was designed.”

With the operational aspects of AXIOM in place, Perryman is now starting to use the wealth of information in them AXIOM database to automate the production of management reports, including measurements against key metrics and KPIs. This information has until now been possible only through a lot of manual and spreadsheet work. Perryman is now working with AXIS to develop a series of such reports directly from the AXIOM database using the AXIOM Reporting and Analysis toolset.

Hauge concludes by saying: “Coming from an environment where we really didn’t have an integrated system, the information and capabilities AXIOM now provides us is tremendous. We would not be able to keep growing as we are without having made this move.”

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