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Putting Plex Through Its Paces

“We undertook a thorough review of our options, going to demos of alternative ERPs including Epicor, NetSuite and Microsoft Dynamics,” says Scatena. “Ultimately Plex was a much better match for us. It had all the processes we needed integrated into one solution. And when we saw it running in production environments at Plex customer sites as well as another manufacturing company, Whitehall Industries, across town, we decided it was the perfect fit for us.” 

In particular, FloraCraft liked the fact that the Plex Manufacturing Cloud was a true cloud solution. Every user worked with the always-current version of the software so there were no issues with version control or functionality gaps. “We only have two IT folks at FloraCraft so not having to manage additional servers and software is a real bonus for us, as is the minimal overhead required to upgrade versions or manage ERP licensing!”

Test, Test and Test Again...

Knowing what a significant change this deployment would make to their operations, and recognizing the low margin/high volume nature of the business, the FloraCraft management team designed a testing and training plan specifically to mitigate risk, make cutover completely seamless and protect production integrity.

Scatena describes what happened: “We decided to bring the Time & Attendance module online first so that HR, supervisors and employees could get used to the software. Following this, we tested how some of our most complex processes would work, learning each new module with our project manager at Plex. We figured if the application worked seamlessly to deliver products that require up to six steps everything else would be a breeze.”

“This testing phase actually gave us some unexpected benefits,” states Scatena. “It allowed us to tear up our old processes, get rid of old habits and start over. As we built up the layers of complexity by testing Plex across the business, from receipt of goods to shipping and invoicing, we often uncovered opportunities to enhance the way we work.”

Engaging Employees

As powerful as any software appears to be, it can only deliver value if users work with it. FloraCraft’s IT Director, Wally Cain was concerned about the low level of IT skills amongst the plant floor workforce and whether this would in fact be a roadblock to the Plex installation.

“If any future customers of Plex are concerned about how their workforce will take to the Plex Manufacturing Cloud I would tell them not to worry.”

Rapid, Profit-yielding Results

Within a few months of starting their project, FloraCraft had rolled out Plex across all four of their sites. The system has now been live for more than two years and has transformed both the operational efficiency and commercial success of the company, as follows:

In 2014, FloraCraft won Walmart’s Supplier of the Year accolade—something that the Plex Manufacturing Cloud played a crucial role in achieving.

Walmart looked to its suppliers to execute on some important metrics around sales growth, on-time shipping and fill–rate, gross margin return on investment, retail unit turns, and replenishable in stock—where 99 percent of their stores had to be stocked on any given day.

“The Plex Advanced Planning & Scheduling functionality was particularly useful in helping us better serve Walmart,” Scatena clarifies. “Every week the retailer updates its warehouse order projections in terms of what it needs to buy. We load this information into Plex and get a view of Walmart’s forecast versus what we have on order. This gives us much better visibility of lead times for suppliers like this. Also, being able to dynamically schedule production allows us to ensure we have the right quantities of materials at the right time.” “With Walmart we have a six-day lead-time. They send their orders in on a Tuesday and we ship them back on Friday through to Monday, so it’s vital that we have the right inventory on hand.”

This efficiency has resulted in an increase in FloraCraft SKUs placed with Walmart by an incredible 60 percent.

• Profitability is rising since FloraCraft has seen a 60 percent increase in revenue with zero percent increase in labor hours.
• Fill Rate is another measure Walmart uses, which FloraCraft meets using the serialized inventory capabilities in Plex. It has 160 SKUs with Walmart, in high volumes, and now has the ability to track all of its inventory, which helps to ensure Walmart gets the right product at the right store. Plex has helped FloraCraft to increase fill rates from an excellent 99.35 percent to an even better 99.7 percent. 
• Quality is critical in mass markets so it is vital to have the right UPC number on a product. Plex forces production staff to scan and verify UPC codes within the manufacturing process. Before Plex they had undertaken manual verification, which was unsurprisingly subject to mistakes given that FloraCraft holds 3,500 SKUs. With Plex, verification is 100 percent perfect. 
• Time and attendance, part of the Plex HR module, ensures that all information concerning staff is in one place. Supervisors can also get a view of how their people are performing and share that insight with the HR team. 
• Financial reporting is crucial in organizations such as FloraCraft that run a low margin, high volume business model. In the past, the firm could generate financial statements, but their accuracy was questionable. It was impossible to capture purchase price data or manufacturing variances. “With Plex we can capture variances and this has now made a difference to profitability. Before Plex, our costs were best guesses and we’d factor that with as much actual data as we could manually collect. Now with Plex we have more accurate costing data, which allows us to do something extraordinary—pin costs down to one tenth of a cent!” says Scatena. 
• Profitable product development is also far easier now due to the real-time data FloraCraft can derive from Plex, and this is helping the leadership team to make better and faster decisions about which products to invest in for the future.
• Decision-making has improved thanks to Plex’s business intelligence tool. This allows managers to gain insights across all departments and even operational staff are benefitting. Scatena expounds the merits: “By creating production dashboards that associates can see with data such as rates per hour, fill rates, and shipping metrics, all in real time is something we could only dream of before, and it’s something that is really motivating our staff.”