Defense Contractor:

In the face of a dramatically shrinking defense market, the Manager of Information Systems at an aerospace products manufacturer had to meet the challenges of an increasingly price competitive environment. A significant change in strategic direction was required. In order to survive, the company had to aggressively transition from being a single product manufacturer to a low cost producer of multiple products for both the commercial and defense markets. To accommodate this radical shift in complexity, their enterprise system needed to be improved.

The IS Manager needed a flexible system to accommodate the conversion from a traditional functional organization to a product-oriented organization with cellular manufacturing being driven by self-directed work teams. The business system needed to integrate the teams and management with meaningful real time information to support the successful start-up and day-to-day operation of six new commercial product lines, coexistent with the original defense work. Working as an integral part of their in-house integrated process teams, Metasystems developed a tailored ERP solution that enabled our client to achieve world class results. Through the efforts of the Metasystems/Client project team, the company was named the “most improved division” by the corporation and later received their highly prized Signature Award for manufacturing excellence. Subsequently “Industry Week” magazine nationally recognized them as one of “America’s Best Plants.” These awards were in recognition of their rapid and effective change that resulted in the following improvements:

• Work in process reduced 80%
• Total stock reduced by two-thirds while sales volume doubled
• Cycle time reduced 75% with process steps reduced 60%
• Manufacturing travel distance reduced by 88%