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Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP)

IMC Works with Custom Container Solutions to Select New ERP System

With the help of: Pennsylvania Manufacturing Extension Partnership

About

Custom Container Solutions is a manufacturing company providing waste and recycling roll-off containers to meet the needs of individual businesses, municipalities and, more recently, the gas drilling industry.

The Challenge

Custom Container Solutions was rapidly outgrowing the effectiveness of the spreadsheet tools they had developed to manage their growing business. They were realizing inefficiencies in generating information to send to the factory to produce cut sheets and other sub-assemblies so that roll off and other custom containers could be built efficiently on the production line that is completing about eight containers a day. Taking information from the factory back into the spreadsheet "management system" and sharing this information with QuickBooks for accounting activities was becoming too time consuming and redundant. Managing multiple levels of inventory was also becoming time consuming and time constrained, resulting in errors that were impacting production planning.
IMC's primary assistance in the last 12 months was HR-related so we are unable to extract specific dollar investments; however, we are planning on investing 5.5M and hire 30 more hourly workers in the next 12 months and IMC's support is essential to that investment.
— Todd Vonderheid, Managing Member

MEP's Role

IMC contracted with DVIRC to work with Custom Container Solutions to select a new ERP system. Services provided included DVIRC visiting the company and conduct staff interviews throughout the business process of CRM to cash. DVIRC documented how business was currently done and how business should be done in the future. DVIRC converted its notes into a business process narrative, which was sent to vendors so they could respond on how their software solution would meet the company's needs. TDVIRC then summarized the responses and reviewed them with the company. DVIRC then facilitated two rounds of software demonstrations.

 

After all four demonstrations, the company decided which software solutions they wanted to see as finalists in the competition. DVIRC worked with the company to ask all the right questions and to make sure they saw enough functionality to be positioned to reach the right software decision. DVIRC assisted with checking references of the system that the company preferred and provided guidance on how to negotiate final terms of a contract.

At the conclusion of the demonstrations and reference checking activities, Custom Container Solutions was in position to know which solution best supported its vision for how they wanted to run the company in the future and how the software chosen would add value to its business and support its growth.

Created August 4, 2022