Global Shop Solutions customer Tackpoint produces custom-engineered bearings systems for the oil and gas industry, specifically in downhole drilling. Their products range from high-temperature thrust bearings to combination needle roller thrust bearings and thin section radial and thrust bearings. Tackpoint is headquartered in Edmonton, Alberta, and they ship their products out through the United Kingdom, Norway, the Middle East, and Singapore.
Before Tackpoint CEO Robert Friesen joined the company, the 1st attempt to use Global Shop Solutions ERP Software did not go well. Employees were trying to find ways to work around the system rather than using it to manage their manufacturing production process. When Friesen joined the company, he saw the potential in Global Shop Solutions and ordered a reimplementation to straighten things out.
The reimplementation went very well, and we began to see immediate results. Global Shop Solutions allowed us to eliminate the manual spreadsheets we had everywhere. It helped to smooth out our dynamic schedule. And now that we can plan our work properly, we can get products to the customer faster and more accurately.
Robert Friesen, CEO at Tackpoint
Since Tackpoint sub-contracts all the machining of its components, one of the primary goals with Global Shop Solutions was improving scheduling to meet increasing customer demand. Tackpoint also wanted a more accurate way of allocating time to their jobs and determining their real costs of assembly. Global Shop Solutions’ Advanced Planning & Scheduling (APS) module and workcenter processes have enabled the company to meet these demands. According to Friesen, “We book orders six months out, so we constantly need to adjust our schedule to accommodate changing customers’ needs,” he says. “With Global Shop Solutions’ dynamic scheduler, we can easily see what we’re doing when we shift jobs around. APS tells us where we have capacity, so we can move jobs up to those days rather than just trying to do both jobs at once.”
Tackpoint struggled with inventory management issues. They often had to contend with variances between inventory numbers in the system and actual inventory on hand. After the re-implementation, inventory is more accurate and makes the job at Tackpoint much more efficient. As a result of tighter inventory controls, Tackpoint has reduced scrap costs from a high of 20% to less than 5%, with the majority of the savings coming from the ability to track inventory more accurately on production runs. Additionally, their distress inventory has dropped more than 200%.
As Friesen and his team get more comfortable with their ERP software, they have been taking advantage of custom Crystal Reports using system data. One of their favorite Crystal Reports is the company’s top 25 parts, based on net sales. This allows Friesen and his team to see top customers favorite products to buy. As Tackpoint continues to master using Global Shop Solutions, they continue to see company growth and increased efficiency on the shop floor.
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