Cloud-Based ERP Fuels Repeat Orders, On-Time Delivery, and Year-Over-Year Growth
Companies rely on PLITEK for components across a wide range of markets including medical device, automotive, industrial, electronics, renewable energy and consumer packaged goods. The components they manufacture are not only mission-critical, but also tailor-made, with unique and complex materials and requirements.
To meet customers’ product specifications, PLITEK supports every stage of the product lifecycle—from design and materials selection assistance to prototyping to scalable vertically integrated production. A key part of the company’s success is attributable to Epicor ERP (now known as Epicor Kinetic), streamlining supply chain operations to help meet or exceed quality and delivery expectations.
With Epicor’s ERP system in place for 20+ years, PLITEK’s IT Manager Jeff Kusiciel details how the platform helps offer both a competitive advantage and a key selling point, reflecting the company’s commitment to accurately planning and fulfilling customer requirements. The recent migration to Epicor Kinetic cloud ERP has been critical to our success, resulting in 98.5% on-time shipping, long-standing customer relationships, and significant year-over-year growth.
Kusiciel admits the company was holding out on a move to the cloud, electing to stay on-premises with an older version due to its stability and performance, and the perception of business interruption caused by the upgrade process. However, the “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it” mentality came to a head when an almost unrecoverable incident highlighted the risk of not having our mission-critical ERP system on a current, supported technology stack.
“We recognized we were on borrowed time, in a high-risk position, with very limited recovery options since we were several versions behind. This incident forced us to evaluate the critical functions that resided on-premises,” Kusiciel explains. “Moving Kinetic to the cloud gave us several advantages: a quick and relatively painless upgrade path, a current, supported environment for data security, and real-time access to ERP data for remote workers anywhere.”
Because PLITEK was leapfrogging ahead through several versions of Kinetic, data had to be appropriately prepared for the new SQL environment, led by Epicor Professional Services. “We didn’t need to be cloud migration experts, because Epicor had a critical eye on our data and was there to spearhead test scenarios and validate our environment before going live,” says Kusiciel.
The company stayed true to the Kinetic platform, with minimal customizations, which expedited their piloting cycles. “Overall, the migration took 9 months and probably could have gone faster if we weren’t several major versions behind,” according to Kusiciel. “We went live on a Monday morning, and the company picked up right where we left off, with Kinetic working just as it should.” “We were able to power down and decommission the old on-premise hardware and never had to fire it up again.”
PLITEK’s vast array of converting capabilities, such as precision die-cutting, film extrusion, adhesive coating, slitting, and laminating, requires various different approaches based on part designs, materials, and application requirements. “Much of what we do is made-to-order, rather than a standardized, repetitive product. Our sales team relies heavily on Epicor’s engineer on-the-fly quoting capability to estimate costs and establish pricing for products we’ve never manufactured before with materials we’ve sometimes never used,” Kusiciel says.
We didn’t need to be cloud migration experts because Epicor had a critical eye on our data and was there to spearhead test scenarios and validate our environment before going live.
“For industries with long product development cycles and complex part requirements, such as those in medical device, the flexibility that Kinetic’s quoting capability offers is critical to our success.” Kusiciel details the value of being able to quote in a sandbox environment without having to create new parts or operations until we win the business. “We can pick from existing or create new materials and operations to create sometimes very complex methods of manufacturing in the quote to estimate costs and establish selling prices. If we win the business, the engineering team then has a ready-to-go template to set up parts, revisions, methods of manufacturing and jobs. The ability for us to quote and engineer on the fly helps us turn around custom engineered quotes for customers for 50 parts or 50 million parts quickly enabling speed to market.”
PLITEK sells to several of the Fortune 500, all of whom are focused on risk mitigation and helping ensure product requirements are properly translated to purchase orders, design, and fulfillment. The company points to Kinetic as a selling tool and competitive advantage, calling out the ERP environment on the company’s website as well as during conversations with customers.
Being able to say we have an ERP environment that helps us manage all parts of our supply chain creates customer confidence. When they visit us and see Kinetic in action with real-time dashboards, data collection terminals, and barcode scanning, they know they are mitigating risk by working with us.
PLITEK leverages all parts of the platform, from initial sales quoting and order processes through to shipping and payments. For example, the customer service team relies on Kinetic for sales order planning. The engineering team easily manages parts configurations, revisions, and workflows. The purchasing team generates suggestions for purchase orders for more accurate production planning. And the quality team supports purchase order receipt inspections, creating quality records by accepting or rejecting parts.
“Truly every department within our organization uses Kinetic to support critical functions,” Kusiciel continues. “We built our processes around our ERP environment, with all vital information flowing through Kinetic to drive widespread manufacturing efficiencies.”
A process- and risk-driven company, PLITEK uses Kinetic dashboards to closely monitor day-to-day activities, assess metrics, and support ISO 9001 and ISO 13495 certifications. Individual departments use data within to drive quality-driven processes: customer service stays on top of sales order backlogs to hit delivery dates, the quality team assesses quotes in process, while accounting closely tracks aged receivables and payables to improve cash flow.
“Kinetic gives us real-time business intelligence about many mission-critical aspects of our operation including, on-time purchase order receipts, supplier quality acceptance, inventory control, manufacturing efficiency, and on-time shipments. This data helps us identify key trends and put actions in place quickly to ensure exceptional quality and reliability in every project,” adds Kusiciel.
PLITEK completes more than 400 jobs per month and is growing while achieving more than 98.5% on-time shipments—a key reason new customers choose PLITEK and existing customers stay with them for decades. Epicor has been there throughout their growth process.
“If we don’t deliver on time, on quantity, and on quality, we don’t have customers,” Kusiciel ends. “Kinetic has enabled our year-over-year growth success by giving us a very capable and flexible ERP toolset, allowing us to take on a significant amount of new customer business while continuing to serve our existing long-term customers at a very high level.”
