Customer Success Story

Cold Jet

Cold Jet, LCC is the pioneer in the research and development of dry ice blasting and dry ice production technology, setting the standard for quality, performance and reliability in the field.  Founded in 1986 on the idea of creating cost-effective, environmentally responsible and technologically advanced dry ice solutions, Cold Jet’s solutions are an effective and cost-effective way for many industries to maximize production capability and quality.

For removing the residue from rubber or plastic molds, cleaning soot or mold from buildings after a fire or flood, paint removal, general cleaning or industrial blast-type cleaning, dry ice blasting offers an environmentally friendly, efficient, and powerful alternative to sand blasting, bead blasting or soda blasting. Dry ice is frozen carbon dioxide, a colorless, odorless, tasteless gas found naturally in our atmosphere. The ice media sublimates (evaporate) on contact with the surface being cleaned so there is no residue left behind as with the other types of blast cleaning. Cold Jet dry ice blasting equipment is used in Aerospace (Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Electric Aircraft Engine, Pratt & Whitney), Automotive (Bridgestone, Delphi, Johnson Controls, Lear), Electrical (DuPont, Duracell, Fujitsu), Disaster Restoration (Disaster One, ServiceMaster, ServPro), Food and Beverage (Anheuser Busch, Frito Lay, Hershey, Keebler, Kraft, Miller Brewing, Nabisco, Quaker Oats), General Maintenance, Foundry, Historical Restoration, Packaging, Plastics, Printing, Rubber, Wood, and other industries.

From its base in southern Ohio, Cold Jet leads its industry with technological developments in dry ice production and processing, system portability, and efficiency. In 2003, however, the company found itself with a disconnected array of systems for inventory and production, sales, finance, and the California plant, which used different information systems implemented when the plant belonged to a competitor. Weekly updates between production and accounting systems proved time consuming and fraught with errors. Something had to be done.

With the help and advice of a consultant, Cold Jet evaluated several alternatives and selected Epicor Vantage to be the one repository of all the company’s information. “We wanted a system that could bring it all together and help us better communicate across functional areas within the enterprise,” says Michelle de la Vega, Cold Jet’s Business Applications Manager. “Vantage was the best fit for our company and the way we operate.”

Multi-site, multi-company, multi-currency

One of the most important requirements was the ability to handle multi-company, multi-site, and multi-currency needs. “We’re not that big of a company,” de la Vega explains, “but we have a lot of the same needs of larger multi-national companies. We have customers around the world and we have three companies, multiple plants and multiple sales and support locations. These capabilities are very important to us.”

Since going “live” in mid-2004, Cold Jet has seen dramatic improvement in the availability of information and the level of coordination and cooperation between departments. “We have better control of our inventory and now that engineering is on board there’s better coordination between engineering, production and purchasing. Vantage has brought the teams together.” There are direct, measurable benefits as well: inventory days-on-hand is down from 135 days to around 77 days, and receivables days-outstanding has been cut from 53 days to about 45, for example.

The company is particularly pleased with the improvements in customer service. Using the field service module, they are now able to really manage customer contracts and warranty work. They know what units are installed where (by model and serial number) and the service history of each unit, and can easily quote on service requests and track costs and billing. Customers are also pleased with the multi-currency and multi-language capabilities of the system “Our customers in Germany want their documentation in German and want their invoices in Euros, not U.S. Dollars. Our Canadian customers don’t want to be billed in U.S. Dollars either. Vantage handles these translations and conversions with ease,” de la Vega says. “In addition, we used to have someone spend an average of two hours a day just producing the international shipping documentation. Now it’s auto-generated by the Vantage shipping module.”

Many happy returns

Returned materials offer another great example. “We issue an RMA (Return Material Authorization) and track the items as they come back to us, through the inspection and repair or disposition, and all the costs and activities associated with it. There’s some extra work (updating the system) but everyone involved now really appreciates the tremendous benefits we gained, knowing where everything is and what’s happening to it and being able to track the costs and availability.”

Since upgrading to Vantage 8 and SQL-server database in 2006, Cold Jet is finding even more ease and capabilities of their system. Leveraging Microsoft .NET and Web services technology, Vantage 8 features a 100% service-oriented architecture (SOA) offering new levels of application reliability, scalability, system interoperability and flexibility, combined with a rich user experience and low total cost of ownership.

“We are about to do a mass price list update,” de la Vega explains. “Before we would have to do a complicated upload procedure or load pages and pages of data by hand,” with the new SQL server database, they can bring the new prices into the system directly from the spreadsheet they used to develop the pricing.

Overall, Cold Jet is very glad that they have Vantage to bring the varied interests of the company together. “Vantage does a great job of bringing all these aspects of our company together into one database. We are much more coordinated between departments now and work together better than before.”