For more than 60 years, the biggest names in aerospace and defense have trusted Staco Systems as the provider of choice for critical cockpit control systems. The company had an existing Prime-based system that was slow, costly and inefficient. Production scheduling runs took days and had to be completed on the weekends. Closing the books was an ordeal because it could take up to week. And while the books were being closed, no new orders could be entered.
“It was an older system running on very old hardware, and the cost to upgrade was enough to make us look into getting something new.” said Stacoswitch’s Controller. Further the existing system could not handle the amount of data that needed to be maintained to count and manage inventory. The company has over 65,000 unique SKUs to track, and the existing system just wasn’t up to the task. Without the proper technology, inventory counts and adjustments were time consuming and costly.
Staco Systems wanted to upgrade to a new and more efficient system without upsetting their current business. Thus began a long and comprehensive approach to finding a new ERP vendor. The process included evaluating the incumbent system vendor and possible replacements. Three vendors were selected for the final cut. Rover ERP was selected with a final grade of 90.5% conformance to the final selection criteria. No other vendor was even close.
Staco Systems implemented the full complement of Rover’s modules, including Sales and Marketing, Finance, Engineering, Manufacturing and Production, Distribution and Inventory and the Product Configurator. “The impact was immediate,” the Controller said. “Planning and production runs that had taken 2-3 days were now taking 20-30 minutes, plus the company was running with more current data and able to make better decisions.”
Inventory is counted and controlled by the Rover ERP system, which had no issues in managing all 65,000 SKUs. The company has moved from Physical Inventory counts (that once took weeks) to Cycle Inventory Counts that take minutes per day with 98% accuracy. Production planning now has the ability to look at the path of critical parts on a BOM that is 11 levels deep and to order those critical parts with long lead times, or to create safety stock to keep production running. This cuts costs and helps the company be more competitive.
With Rover ERP, the company’s books can be closed within 1-2 days, and the system allows Staco Systems to continue to book orders in the interim. This helps keep revenue and customer satisfaction high. Added benefits include the ability for users to run their own specialized reports as needed and not to wait to make special requests at the end of the month. This has saved time and costs while giving the users a level of data access and control that they never had before.
The company’s engineering department is using the product configurator to become more efficient and to speed the order entry process. Order Entry and Sales personnel have access to all historical orders. Plus, annual upgrades to the newest version of Rover ERP have added several more features on the front end, including even better access to data and direct drill-down capabilities. Staco Systems is also satisfying reporting requests from their parent company and managing two distinct businesses with the same Rover ERP system.
