Customer Success Story

Lakin General Corporation

Lakin also produces Ticor die-cut rubber parts which are used for various kinds of hangers and isolation mounts, primarily for agricultural and industrial applications. In addition, the company is a subcontractor to OEMs for CNC and machining center work. Lakin’s sorting, rubber and roller divisions are located in Chicago, while their newest plant, QDS/Henschen, is located in Jackson Center, Ohio.

A New Solution for the New Millennium
In early 1998, with rumblings of Y2K looming in the near future, Lakin knew that their dying System 36 technology made selecting and implementing a new solution a top priority. They spent three to four months defining their needs and getting demonstrations from various companies, including Epicor Software Corporation. With a consultant’s guidance and employee feedback, Lakin purchased Vantage by Epicor in 1998 and went live in March of 1999. Lakin’s main goal, across all sites, was to get a better handle on their costing and scheduling, as well as normal accounting and payroll functions. Gib Younger, CEO, and Greg Clauser, general manager of Lakin’s roller division are pleased with the system and feel that they definitely made the best choice by selecting the Vantage solution. “In addition to Y2K compatibility, there were other things we wanted to achieve. We wanted to improve our scheduling capability, and get a better handle on our costs and purchasing inventory,” Younger says.

Why Vantage?
There were several features within the Vantage solution that appealed to Lakin. “The strong user group in the area and your competitive price put the Vantage solution over the top,” says Clauser. The well thought-out GUI and Windows interface, ease of use and extracting information and the various trackers were also big selling points. Clauser adds, “The Vantage drill downs were easier to use compared to the other solutions we looked at. We just saw an edge with Vantage.”

Improved Scheduling
Gaining better control over their scheduling was an integral point for Lakin. This meant putting it into a format that could be understood by everyone, not just employees who had scheduling experience. Once Lakin started to lay out and identify work centers and put in capacities, routings and loadings, they could easily locate and identify bottlenecks using the Vantage system. “Before Vantage, we looked at finished product and estimated how much finishing work it required. Now that routings are in the system, we can see where the work load is rather than guessing where the work load might be once orders are put in,” says Clauser.

More Inventory Control
With Vantage, Lakin now has better control over their inventory, and they have a more accurate part number count. In the past, Lakin knew they had raw materials and finished goods—everything else in the plant was work in process. Employees now know what subcomponents the company has and no longer run jobs for twice as much as they need. Clauser says, “We make jobs for a month’s supply instead of a three month supply, and the inventory levels have dropped significantly.”

Reduced Lead Time
With Vantage, Lakin’s roller division has been able to shorten lead times on many roller assemblies that have common subcomponents. With the old system, every time an assembly or subassembly order came in, they ended up under-reporting, misreporting or reporting on the wrong job. This was because some of the subassemblies were common to more than one end item, and if they were needed for 10 different products, then there were 10 different jobs going through the plant. “Vantage has enabled us to make jobs for common subassemblies, stock them and get our overall lead times down without risk of obsolescence because we were using those subcomponents and subassemblies in more than one end assembly,” Younger explains.

Lakin also has better advanced visibility for items that require longer lead times, such as casting and forging. These items require advanced visibility to ensure that they go out on time. Clauser adds, “I can say that under the old system, if you told me you needed 300 rollers it might have taken me four to five weeks. With the visibility I have in Vantage, and if there are subassemblies in stock, it might take two weeks.”

Expediting the ISO 9002 Certification
In 1999, Lakin had a program in place to train for ISO 9002 certification. This was put on hold because addressing Y2K and system change issues were first priority. Once Vantage was implemented and Lakin turned their attention back to certification, they found it a much easier task because they had better information and improved tracking. Clauser notes,“We can do things with Vantage that we couldn’t even imagine being able to do on our old system. If we hadn’t had Vantage, we wouldn’t have been able get through the certification process as smoothly as we did.”

Happy Employees
Lakin’s employees are also very happy with the Vantage solution, in particular, their purchasing manager. Clauser says, “We used to track purchases on an old card system. Our purchasing manager had the history for the last 10 years of part purchases on a couple thousand cards in his office. Now, he can call up items on the screen, investigate price breaks and put in requests for quotations.”

Vantage also eliminated dependency on key people for information as all employees now have access to centralized information. With the old system, people who had certain skills and had been working a certain job for a long time were essentially doing things in their heads. “Now, all of our information is on paper so first of all, it is more accurate and secondly, other people can have access to it so if someone goes on vacation, we don’t have to shut down,” Clauser says.

Vantage Helps Streamline Reports
Before Vantage, Lakin would run reports in weekly batches, which meant that they saw an open purchase order report once a week. If more orders needed to be added, they were hand written on the bottom of the report, while delivered orders were manually crossed off the list. With the Vantage reporting capabilities, Lakin now runs a wide variety of reports on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.

Lakin runs labor reports daily to see what was misreported, or if there is an issue they need to be aware of, such as an unusual number of reworks. Weekly, Lakin looks at hours, indirect labor, relative efficiency, set up and scrap. Younger says, “It’s nice to be able to run a scrap report for the whole year and see which parts, operations and scrap codes were the biggest problems. That is the type of information we never could have dreamed of getting out of the old system.”

On a monthly basis, Lakin runs a “winners vs. losers” report, which details the products that were shipped over margin and out of all jobs they closed, which were significantly below estimate. They then delve into the jobs that underachieved on an individual basis to determine why. “You can see why things happen when you have a system that can highlight what was bad and drill down quickly, without spending a lot of time finding out whether it is something that needs additional investigation or not,” says Clauser.
Vantage reporting features are also beneficial on a plantwide level. Instead of four different reporting systems and four different ways of pulling reports, everything is consolidated under one system because it works the same at each company. Younger says, “When we look at these reports, we can run them for any of the companies and extract information.”

Corporate Overview
Each plant under the Lakin General Corporation umbrella is different—they are all individual operations that produce or manufacture different items. Vantage allows the company’s management to view each location and get a good overview on everything, not only how the individual companies are working but also as a total roll up. “Our employees now could not function without Vantage. People really depend on the system,” says Younger.