As a third-generation family-owned business, Louis Industries, a steel processing company that specializes in supporting lean, rapid-response manufacturing, first opened its doors in 1940 as the Louis Blacksmith Shop. Today, they are a leader in steel processing and are a major regional supplier of mild steel, stainless steel, and aluminum, and are ISO 9001:2008 certified. After implementing Global Shop Solutions ERP software in 2002, Louis Industries has seen exponential growth and achievement in their manufacturing business.
Since implementing Global Shop Solutions, Louis Industries has grown by 600%, yet their workforce has only increased by 300%.
Since implementing Global Shop Solutions, Louis Industries has grown by 600%, yet their workforce has only increased by 300%. Louis attributes much of this growth to years of working with the software, which has allowed the company to evolve with the industry and develop processes to meet customers’ changing needs.
“As the industry continually moves toward lean manufacturing, everyone wants an inventory level of zero,” he says. “With the processes we have built over the years to lean our own company, we can work with customers to become lean because we’ve set up our system to handle it.”
“Global Shop Solutions has helped us evolve as the thinking behind business evolves,” continues Louis. “Everything is faster, lead times are shorter, and everyone wants just-in-time. We’ve learned to help our customers solve these and other problems by developing an agile, functional production system that can adapt to what each individual customer needs.”
As 15-year users of Global Shop Solutions, Louis Industries has seen a lot of changes in the software over the years. Management constantly upgrades to the latest version of the software to take advantage of the new features and functionalities.
They also develop custom GAB (Global Application Builder) scripts to adapt the system to their unique operating environment. They downloaded a number of custom dashboards from the ARC store, a web portal that contains more than 1,000 free, custom screens, scripts and applications developed by Global Shop Solutions and our customers.
According to Louis, even as the software has grown in complexity and sophistication, it remains easy to learn and use. The Shop Floor Data Collection software allows shop floor employees to quickly log on and off jobs. The customizable reports provide data in preferred formats. And the ability to manual eliminate spreadsheets saves time and improves productivity.
“Global Shop Solutions constantly stays on top of how things are evolving in the manufacturing world,” says Louis. “They listen to their customers saying we need this or it would be nice to have that and then make it part of the system. Even though we’ve had the software a long time, we’re still learning more and evolving with it to continually simplify what we do and how we do it.”
To learn more about Louis Industries and their use of ERP software to simplify their manufacturing, download their case study.