Over the past 40 years, UFP has focused on growing organically with enhanced services and products to new and existing customers as well as strategically acquiring competitive firms to fill key industry and client needs. Today, the company includes 11 separate facilities nationwide.
Centralized operations across 11 site
With this expansion also came the need to integrate UFP with the differing IT programs used at each new plant. After a year of research, the company selected Epicor ERP (now known as Kinetic) as the new standard for mining data across the organization and to centralize operational functions.
“This is an extremely fragmented industry,” said Ron Lataille, chief financial officer, UFP Technologies. “The only way to turn a profit is to thoroughly understand what does and doesn't make money. Epicor provided a well-controlled platform for analyzing thousands of jobs companywide, closing our books on time, ensuring compliance with stringent SEC regulations, and reporting results.”
Prior to using the Epicor solution, each individual plant operated as a small company within the overall organizational structure with no commonality. Parts and customer histories were labeled and stored differently electronically. It was both arduous and time-consuming to consolidate data and manage supplies with timely financial details based on the information accessed from each site. Reporting redundancies and inaccuracies were common.
“We now have a single version of the truth,” explained David Smith, senior vice-president of operations, UFP. “Epicor provided a much faster, simpler, and streamlined way to share information and best practices among all our plants. Every facility is live within the system. The silos that existed between our companies have been removed. The duplication of information listed under variable headings is gone. Definitions and calculations are the same. For the first time, we have the ability to act on extremely reliable information integrated from all the different companies. With Epicor, we now know where we are successful.”
A single point to multi-plant functionality
According to UFP, Epicor is responsible for providing a single chart of accounts incorporating multi-plant functionality. Part numbers have been synchronized throughout the company and employees now have centralized access to customer information. This has allowed UFP to negotiate better pricing for materials with vendors based on companywide buying patterns, rather than through the purchases at a single location. Customers also receive price breaks for the products bought at multiple sites.
Other benefits have included the capacity to track and record all manufacturing activities, including material costs and profit margins. Best practices are then recorded and shared throughout the entire organization, while price points are adjusted to ensure the profitability of each job.
Growth through great ideas
“We are dedicated to providing a world-class customer experience and growing the company through continuous improvements,” added Keith Cote, director of IT, UFP. “This includes keeping pace with great ideas and creating efficiencies with the data aggregated from all the different plants. Epicor has combined the data from each separate ERP system with internal applications, enabling us to better capture and review costs while streamlining and instituting a wide variety of processes. This ranges from payroll and time sheets to EDI.”
“Plus, all this was achieved with the easy customization of Epicor packages without the use of hardcore coders. We did it all ourselves with drag-and-drop technology and other simple-to-use tools. Epicor has laid the foundation for our future by accommodating the ongoing growth with more customers, plants, and products,” concluded Cote.