AXIS Helps Stripco Outstrip the Competition

Profile
Founded in 1984, Stripco Inc. offers high-quality steel products coupled with knowledgeable, personalized service. Stripco manufactures production-ready steel coils and strips and produces hot-rolled, hot-rolled pickled and oiled, precision cold-rolled and galvanized steel products in thicknesses of .018 to .312 and widths from .375 to 26 inches. Stripco’s 26-acre campus sits along the St. Joseph River in Mishawaka, Ind. From this location, Stripco produces slit coil, edge-conditioned coil, cut-to-length strip, and oscillate wound coil for anyone making production steel parts. Stripco’s steel coils and strips are delivered all over the U.S. by Stripco’s own delivery fleet. Its primary customers are in the automotive, construction, hardware, and furniture industries. As such, Stripco’s steel can be found in automobile seats, structural reinforcement, fencing, shelving, upholstered furniture, and a diverse variety of other products.

Challenge
As Stripco grew, it continued to rely on homegrown systems that were developed in response to specific business requirements. Eventually, though, custom development became a trap. “Over time, our many disparate systems became antiques with self-imposed limitations,” said Eric Hiler, Stripco’s general manager. “We weren’t collecting enough data, and the information wasn’t accessible.”

According to Hiler, when someone needed a report, it would take a programmer a full day to generate it. And, there was no real analysis capability. In a fast-moving, highly- competitive business like Stripco’s, an inability to access information is a serious handicap. Stripco needed real-time scheduling information and complete cost-of-sales information.

Why AXIS?
After looking at a number of options, the search for a system that addressed the challenges of the metals industry started to become frustrating for the Stripco team.

“We were sick of hearing software people talk about their add-ons [to fit Stripco’s industry], when it was clear that they really didn’t understand the intricacies and complexities of our business,” said Hiler.

After receiving a direct mail piece, Stripco came upon a company called AXIS, a Boston-based provider of ERP software for the metals, wire and cable industries. Stripco challenged AXIS to prove its capabilities in three areas: costing, production scheduling and tracking, and steel industry-specific quality and certification.

“These needs were non-negotiable,” said Hiler, “and it turned out that AXIOM ERP had the capabilities we were looking for in the standard solution—out of the box. They really knew what they were talking about.”

The implementation took only six months from start to finish. “A fast implementation is possible with the right people,” said Hiler. “The AXIS team was great. We laughed. We worked late into the night. If your team is mismatched, you will suffer. If you have the right set of people, it can work.”

Results
In the middle of its second year with AXIOM ERP, Stripco is reluctant to release specific numbers. “We don’t have good measurements from before we used AXIOM ERP, so we really can’t talk specifics about improvements,” said Hiler. “One of the key reasons we chose AXIS was to implement good measurements. We see the system as an important enabler for long-term improvement.”

Although specific numbers aren’t available, there’s ample evidence of benefits at Stripco. The company can now respond faster to customer inquiries on order status. And there’s more: “When we need ‘moment-in-time’ information, such as quality, holds, shipping, and billing, we can pull the information from AXIOM ERP in real-time,” said Hiler. “These capabilities help us identify and act on statistically-relevant information, rather than just acting on a whim.”

AXIOM ERP also provides costs on inventory and work orders—critically important information in a business where material is such a large part of the cost of goods. Allocating overhead accurately across orders helps Stripco identify where it can make a profit, as well as avoid losing money. Real-time scheduling offers big advantages as well, allowing the company to effectively manage a number of different processes and yields across many customer orders and lots of coil inventory.

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