Foam Manufacturer Achieves a 25% Reduction in Accounting Workload With ERP Software

A global leader in foam fabrication and cushion packaging, Foam Design is a family-owned business specializing in close-tolerance foam packaging products. The firm designs and manufactures precision foam packing solutions for the defense, aerospace, oil eraser and filtration industries.

When Foam Design outgrew its previous production management system, IT Manager Chase Erwin was tasked with finding and implementing a more robust and flexible ERP system. After researching several different products, he settled on Global Shop Solutions ERP software.

We chose Global Shop Solutions…mainly for its superb inventory control and job costing capabilities. Our old system had no true costing visibility, which meant we had to guesstimate every time we quoted a new job. The customizable Dashboards in Global Shop Solutions give us accurate real-time and historical costing data that has significantly improved our estimating and quoting processes.

Chase Erwin, IT Manager at Foam Design

Accurate Inventory & Job Costing on Multi-Level Jobs

Foam Design’s largest jobs often involve up to 60 different subcomponents, which requires building complex and lengthy bill of materials (BOMs). Because the company’s previous ERP system could not tie material issued to subcomponents to the parent job, it created inventory and costing problems while making it difficult to track and manage work in process (WIP) to finished goods (FG).

“With Global Shop Solutions, we can do WIP to FG with each subcomponent,” says Erwin, “and the system keeps it all in one lump sum in the parent account. We can also track the progress of each subcomponent through the BOM to make sure it gets issued to the correct job. Instead of our plant manager having to spend a lot of time manually checking every job, shop floor supervisors simply log into Global Shop Solutions ERP software to verify that all materials and costs have been issued correctly.”

The software also saves time when managing stock inventory. Two of Foam Design’s biggest customers require them to stock a finished goods inventory that they can pull from throughout the year. With its minimum inventory and safety stock features, Global Shop Solutions ERP software ensures Foam Design always has enough inventory on hand.

25% Reduction in Accounting Workload

Foam Design’s old ERP system created costing issues around labor tracking. Because the system could not export data cleanly, accounting personnel had to copy and paste labor data into an Excel spreadsheet and then manually manipulate the data to make it usable.

Global Shop Solutions ERP software seamlessly exported all data into whatever format accounting needed. According to Erwin, the time savings in this area alone have reduced the accounting department’s workload by about 25%.

Custom Dashboards Transform Quoting Process

Erwin is a big fan of the ability to customize Dashboards in Global Shop Solutions ERP software. His favorite is a custom Sales Order Dashboard he created using the GAB (Global Application Builder) application, which allows users to create custom screens and programs. This custom Dashboard (which is available to all Global Shop Solutions customers free of charge on the online ARC store) serves as a gateway to everything Foam Design’s office workers need to perform their jobs.

Fast, Reliable Technical Support

“Transitioning to a new ERP system is a major undertaking,” Erwin says. “To ensure it went well, Global Shop Solutions assigned a project manager and two experienced Consultants who came onsite and guided us through every step of the process. They took the time to learn our company and worked with us from the first day of the transition until we went live with the new system.”

To read about all the ways ERP software made a difference at Foam Design, download their full case study.