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About Donnelly Custom Manufacturing Company
Founded in 1984, Donnelly Custom Manufacturing sets the short-run standard
by providing its OEM customers with value added engineering, highly customized
manufacturing offerings and superior customer support services. Working
with over 600 resins to produce a wide variety of part sizes from less
than one gram to over seven pounds, the Alexandria, MN-based company serves
an array of world-renowned customers including Diebold, Graco and Honeywell.
Donnelly's 230 employees are committed to short-run excellence and provide
such services as: insert molding; gas-assist and structural foam molding;
over-molded parts; complete part decorating and packaging services; machining;
mechanical assemblies; and more. ISO 9001:2000 certified, Donnelly continuously
pursues industry best practices to fulfill on its promise of delivering
good products on time.
Return on Investment
- Optimized efficiency of highly complex operations
- Improved internal and customer communications
- Supported growth (Expanded by 60%)
- Eliminated excess data entry
- Saved hours of over-time
- Sped invoice turnaround
Software
EnterpriseIQ™ ERP software system with RealTime Machine Monitoring,
Quality Management, EDI/XML, Project Manager, Preventative Maintenance,
Payroll, Time & Attendance and more.
Hardware
Oracle database with
Windows-based PCs.
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Short-Run Manufacturer Builds Long-term Success with EnterpriseIQ
Since opening its doors in 1984, Donnelly Custom Manufacturing
has played the short-run game to win. Organized for excellence, Donnelly
has always held fast to the guiding principles of speed, simplicity, service
and success to overcome such challenges as compressed lead-times, fast
change overs and the demands of just-in-time inventory management. Over
the years, Donnelly has focused operations on what it does best: provide
short-run manufacturing and value-added services to original equipment
manufacturers (OEMs) that produce an array of quality goods from industrial
to commercial products. With a can-do attitude at the core of its operations,
Donnelly has set the standard for how short-run is done.
Donnelly's mission to "deliver good products on time,"
underscores the essential truth that every part it makes supports its
customers' success. As company president Ron Kirscht explains: "Our
job security rests on performance alone. Every day. So the promises we
make to our customers must be kept."
For over eight years, Donnelly managed operations using
an OS/2 operating system and various software packages. Production scheduling
was done manually using a magnetic board, a process Donnelly had perfected
to accommodate its high level of mold change overs and the many related
support activities. Yet, while Donnelly achieved much success while using
the OS/2 platform and manual scheduling, the company's growth eventually
began outpacing the system's capacity.
"Manufacturers today operate in a flat world,"
says Kirscht. "The playing field between U.S. and off-shore markets
is growing more level by the day, and every player along the supply chain
is intertwined. If your information technology platform doesn't support
lean operations and EDI transactions, you will fall below the curve."
Donnelly had already modified its old software to manage
manufacturing operations, yet because development for OS/2 was waning,
further modifications would have been time consuming and cost prohibitive.
What's more, Donnelly's customers and suppliers wanted to communicate
and interact through electronic means, which Donnelly's system could not
adequately support. Donnelly also recognized that its manual system of
scheduling and managing the shop floor was too cumbersome to absorb the
growing complexity of short run. Finally, the existing system's limitation
on the number of people who could be in the same module at the same time
had become untenable.
To keep growth on track, in 2001 Donnelly opted to move
away from the old OS/2 platform and migrate to a Windows-based enterprise
resource planning (ERP) system.
"At Donnelly, we are committed to setting the highest
standard in short-run manufacturing," says Kirscht. "Our old
technology was hindering that. Our customers and suppliers were moving
forward and our old software wasn't ready or able to move with them. We
needed an ERP system that could support ever higher levels of connectivity
and excellence."
Beyond the operating system, Donnelly wanted an ERP solution
that could handle the unique requirements of injection molders, such as
add back of regrind, family molds and multi-cavity molds. The company
also wanted a system that had a large enough install base to ensure committed
long-term development and continual improvement.
"We were looking for fit, function and future,"
says Kirscht. "Going into our search we thought that might be a tough
combination to find, but early on we found exactly that in EnterpriseIQ
from IQMS."
As Kirscht explains, historically the plastics industry has been underserved
from an information technology standpoint. Off-the-shelf ERP solutions
typically are not a good fit, and larger systems often require bolt-on,
third party software for customization.
"EnterpriseIQ was different," says Kirscht. "Right
off the curb it looked like an incredible fit, and the more we looked,
the more apparent the value."
Donnelly selected EnterpriseIQ for its comprehensive functionality,
and the fact that - though EnterpriseIQ is designed for all manufacturing
types - it can specifically handle the distinctive issues related to injection
molding.
"There are a lot of hard truths in our industry that
we need software to manage," says Kirscht. "For example, you
might have one tool that makes 64 parts every cycle. Most ERP systems
can't handle these truths. You have to lie to the system to trick it into
doing what you need it to do. We selected EnterpriseIQ because it easily
manages many key aspects of our business. EnterpriseIQ can handle the
truth."
Many other factors also contributed to Donnelly's selecting
EnterpriseIQ. Donnelly liked that EnterpriseIQ is easy to use, intuitive
and required a modest level of training. The company also liked that EnterpriseIQ
is contained and extendable within a single database, no third-party add-ons
needed-ever.
"IQMS's commitment to enhance and improve its single-source
software for the future success of its customers was critical to us,"
explains Kirscht. "We did not want to make a significant investment
only to be left behind in a few years or required to purchase a third-party
solution just to add functionality. EnterpriseIQ offered the best fit
and functionality at an attractive price, on a platform that should be
around and vibrant for a long time to come."
With EnterpriseIQ in place, Donnelly has seen improvements
in every aspect of its business. RealTime Machine Monitoring allows shop
floor supervisors to access production data as it occurs from any computer
in the plant, whereas they used to spend time walking the shop floor to
check presses. Donnelly has also eliminated excess data entry and saved
numerous hours of overtime because team leaders and supervisors no longer
have to work long beyond their shifts to input data, something that consumed
many hours of overtime each day.
Internal, supplier and customer communications have improved
too, and invoicing, which took four hours a day is now complete by 9:00
each morning. But perhaps the biggest factor of success is the level of
complexity or growth Donnelly has been able to manage.
For the plastics industry, Plante & Moran, the nation's
11th largest certified public accounting and business advisory firm, has
defined manufacturing complexity as the number of active resins multiplied
by the number of active presses multiplied again by the number of active
molds a company has in process. According to Jerry Bienias, Donnelly's
vice president of finance and technical operations, the upper quartile
of this index is 1.2 million, but Donnelly's complexity index as measured
by Plante & Moran tops 42 million.
"Plante & Moran was completely surprised by the
level of complexity we manage," says Bienias. "With EnterpriseIQ
we have doubled our complexity and grown our business by 60 percent, all
with a smaller office staff than we had before we installed IQMS. EnterpriseIQ
simplifies processes so we can embrace a greater level of complexity and
manage it well."
Donnelly was also able to move its scheduling system into
EnterpriseIQ with very little effort. This made the switch to a new system
less painful in the respect that the company did not have to change an
established system that worked well.
"At Donnelly, we believe knowing our customers and
their business intimately is critical to our success," says Bienias.
"We appreciate that IQMS operates under that same premise and is
able to adapt their product to meet specific customer requirements with
very little effort or added cost."
Donnelly was up and running with EnterpriseIQ within six
months, and now uses most all modules including RealTime Machine Monitoring,
Quality Management and EDI/XML. The ease with which Donnelly's employees
can now maneuver through every level of business data has saved Donnelly
countless hours and eliminated the mistakes that were inherent with a
manual-based system. In fact, the benefits of having EnterpriseIQ are
so far reaching that Kirscht believes Donnelly made the best choice in
selecting IQMS as a long-term business partner.
"Our customers tend to be large and leading public
companies that have varied and exacting demands, but we're a small private
company with finite resources," explains Kirscht. "Having an
ERP system that supports and confirms our business strategy allows us
to focus on our core competencies and excel where others might fail. Had
we not migrated to EnterpriseIQ, we could not have grown as we have, and
we would be struggling to fulfill our promise to the marketplace. The
fact that we are not struggling, that we are on a pathway of optimization
for the long-term, tells me we made a good choice. And that's very gratifying."
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