Quality Metalcraft Inc.

The Company: About Quality Metalcraft Inc.

The Situation: Manufacturing Plan

Setting The Strategy

To meet its business growth and customer satisfaction objectives, QMC needed to overcome fundamental inefficiencies in its manufacturing operations. For example, the company’s legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution was ineffective in inventory control, which led to frequent stock-outs and missed deliveries. The existing ERP solution also could not support efficient plant and production scheduling, which raised costs from overtime that could have been avoided, unnecessary machine setups and teardowns, and material shortages. ​“Because much of our work is in the prototype side of the automotive industry, we have to manage frequent and aggressive engineering changes,” explains Michael Chetcuti, CEO, Quality Metalcraft, Inc. ​“This makes it critical that we have excellent visibility into our operations so we can effectively manage the volatility in our business.” 

The new solution would need to accurately measure the performance of individual projects so that the information could be used by employees responsible for estimating future jobs. QMC sought a solution that would link its manufacturing operations with inventory, purchasing, plant scheduling, and other business processes. ​“Our primary objective was to implement a proven solution that enabled us to forecast workload and create a precise manufacturing plan based on available resources,” Chetcuti says, adding that the expertise and responsiveness of the solution provider’s staff also was a major consideration.

The Solution: Infor VISUAL ERP

Getting Business-Specific

“Of the four solutions we evaluated, Infor™ ERP VISUAL met our functionality needs the best,” Chetcuti says. ​“The functional capabilities, combined with Infor’s commitment to continually enhance the solution and the excellent feedback we received from existing customers, made Infor ERP VISUAL the obvious choice.” 

Infor’s application is a user-friendly solution with a comprehensive range of business-specific capabilities, including support for EDI, ASNs, and barcode technology. According to Chetcuti, QMC uses Infor ERP VISUAL’s EDI interface and ASN capabilities to communicate electronically with customers and to ship its products directly to its customers’ production lines. In addition, the solution gives QMC easy access to historical operations data, so the company can retrieve all relevant information to support improved decision-making. 

“Although we initially purchased the software for its advanced manufacturing functionality, we’ve added modules for payroll and quality management because the functionality was a good fit for our needs,” Chetcuti says. The payroll module was attractive to QMC because it could easily be linked to the manufacturing functionality. ​“We bought the quality management module because we saw that it could improve our performance, as well as help, maintain our ISO 9002 certification,” he says.

The Results: Infor VISUAL ERP Implementation Benefits

QMC continues to implement additional capabilities in the Infor ERP VISUAL solution. ​“Infor is constantly enhancing the software. As new functionality becomes available, we’ve been able to add new capabilities that have progressively increased our productivity,” Chetcuti says. In addition to the core manufacturing capabilities, payroll module, and quality management, QMC is leveraging engineering change notice, preventative maintenance, and human resources capabilities. ​“When we started this process, we were looking for a solid product. Infor ERP VISUAL has consistently exceeded our expectations,” Chetcuti says. ​“Infor ERP VISUAL plays an important part in our overall corporate strategy to continue growing in our core business and diversify into new markets.”