Titanium Industries Successfully Implements STRATIX, the Metal Industry ERP Software from Invera

Titanium Industries has implemented the metal service center software STRATIX from the metal industry software specialist Invera. This is Invera’s seventh implementation of the STRATIX ERP in the past fifteen months at a metal service center.

Rockaway, NJ (Vocus) June 11, 2010

Titanium Industries, a titanium metal service center, has implemented the metal service center ERP software STRATIX from the metal industry software specialist Invera.

The first phase of implementation included all seven locations in the U.S. (Rockaway, NJ, Wood Dale, IL, Brooklyn Heights, OH, Santa Fe Springs, CA, Jacksonville, FL, and Hillsboro, TX, and Tolland, CT). The implementation included sales, purchasing, receiving, inventory management, certification management, multi-step production, delivery and logistics planning, invoicing, and financials.

Search for Quality
As Titanium Industries’ business grew larger, more global, and more complex, they looked to Invera to provide a system that could accommodate their stringent quality and certification requirements, while enabling them to operate efficiently. TI found their solution in STRATIX.

After completing their training, Titanium Industries implemented a full complement of STRATIX ERP metal software features, including Quote and Sales Order Entry, metal price book, water-jet plate cutting pricing, multi-step processing, shop floor production recording, and on-line shipment planning. A seamless integration of native metal industry terminology, functions, and features made STRATIX more user-friendly and easy to deploy with minimum implementation costs and no modifications.

Sales
Titanium Industries selected STRATIX to improve the productivity of their sales staff through the use of specialized tools to quote and manage orders more rapidly and effectively. Titanium Industries enter Quotes on STRATIX, which automatically retrieves the metal selling price based on the Metal Price Book, and convert these Quotes into Sales Orders. The benefit of the price book is that the salesperson is provided with pricing guidelines, while the STRATIX Quotation function provides the estimated profitability of the quote. The Quote Entry function also provides stock availability, incoming material availability, sales history, and quantity bracket information, all in one screen, to help the salesperson quickly determine the final price.

To take advantage of their large inventory at all locations, sales staff can see the stock availability in any TI warehouse location. This allows the salesperson to source the order from another company location as required. Bob Valerie, Project manager, adds, “A salesperson can easily enter a Sales Order with 20 items, and source the material from 4 different company warehouses. In addition, if that load is consolidated at a single company location before the material is shipped to the customer, STRATIX creates the transfer requirements automatically. This saves a lot of time for the salesperson and makes it easier for us to service our customers.”

For repeat business, TI use the STRATIX Customer Part Specification function, which allows a salesperson to enter the Quote or Sales Order using the customer’s part number. TI can pre-define comprehensive item information (such as product, processing, pricing, specs, certification requirements, etc.) and associate it to a Customer Part Number. When sales enter a quote/order item using a Customer’s Part Number, all the information automatically defaults. This allows for consistency, saves times, and reduces the chance of keying errors.

TI also use the STRATIX plate cutting functions to meet their increasing water-jet plate cutting business. These functions make it easier and faster to enter quotes and orders as the salesperson can choose from a set of shapes, and STRATIX will calculate the estimated time of processing, cost, and charge for processing, and adjust the final price accordingly. Some of the shapes include rings, ring segments, circles, triangles, trapezes and rectangles. The function eliminates manual calculations and increases the accuracy of the price.

Brett Paddock, President and Chief Executive Officer at Titanium Industries, added, “The STRATIX Order Status Desktop has been a tremendous asset to our business. It shows a clear and comprehensive status of the customer order in a single view. We can see where exactly the material is at each stage of processing, including outside processing, or transport planning and shipping. This is especially helpful since we record all production on the shop floor. Sales staff no longer need to hunt down orders and can respond to customer inquiries rapidly and with confidence.”

TI also process orders where titanium ingot is processed through multiple steps internally or at an outside processor and can include forging, heat treatment and saw cutting to produce a finished bar product. Bob adds, “For these types of orders, where the processing can take 16 weeks, the Order Status Desktop has been invaluable. At any point during fulfillment, our salesperson knows exactly where we stand with that order.”

TI also implemented INVEX/CRM, Invera’s Internet-based, fully integrated STRATIX Customer Relationship Management product. This enables sales managers and sales people to manage customer accounts on-line and offers task and activity management, marketing and sales analysis information which is tied to the live data base.

Certification
Quality and Certification are an integral part of Titanium Industries operations. Meeting customer and industry certification and specifications requirements was a critical objective of implementing STRATIX. To this end, Titanium Industries implemented the STRATIX Metal Standards and Specifications features that enable material to be bought, inventoried, and sold to multiple ‘Metal Standards’ specifications. These Metal Standards represent industry-specific specifications such as ASTM, SAE, MIL, AISI, etc. As material is applied to orders, STRATIX verifies that the material applied meets the single or multiple metal standards requested by the customer. This feature has added another layer of controls to guarantee Titanium Industries customers are being supplied with exactly what they ordered.

To assist Sales in locating stock that meets a customer’s requirements, Sales can search stock that meets a certain Metal Standard specification. In addition, to eliminate manual comparisons of the actual results to the published standard specifications, the actual chemical and mechanical results recorded in STRATIX are automatically validated against each Metal Standard to which a product is certified. This provides an additional quality check.

To meet a customer’s need for original mill test certifications, Titanium Industries implemented STRATIXimage, a mill test certificate scanning and retrieval product that automatically emails or prints a copy of the original mill certificate or other third-party testing certificates at time of shipment. A salesperson can also view the certificate from the stock inquiry to ensure that the material meets the customer’s requirements.

Shop Floor Operations
To further increase productivity, quality and order status information, Titanium Industries implemented the STRATIX shop floor production functions to record production in a real-time manner directly from work stations. Operations include picking, processing steps (such as sawing or water-jet cutting), and inspection steps. The warehouse personnel also record the set-up time, run, and tear-down time for each job. By comparing these results to the estimates computed by STRATIX, TI is able to determine their machine and processing efficiency. Bob Valerie indicated that by recording production and inspection directly on the shop floor, they have ensured a higher level of quality, as STRATIX performs many checks at each stage to ensure the proper material is applied.

To complement the shop floor operations, TI are also printing the STRATIX bar coded tags at receiving and production. When combined with the STRATIX WiFi PDA function, the bar codes ensure that material is correctly identified.

To improve on-time delivery and load planning, TI implemented the STRATIX on-line Shipping Planning function. This function provides a comprehensive, multi-layer inquiry that summarizes orders by customer, delivery route, or shipping zone for better load consolidation. The shipping department can highlight orders and create a load with a single click. Bob Valerie adds, “This function has really streamlined our shipping process. For each item that must be shipped, we can see if the item is ready for shipment. It has also allowed us to better manage the transfers between our company locations.”

Bob Valerie also adds, “Another area we really benefited from was how the STRATIX Metal enterprise software handles outside processing. The outside processing steps are fully integrated with the routing of the Sales Order; the creation of the outside processing Purchase Orders and transfer requirements is all automated, and the progression of these types of orders is also shown in the Order Status Desktop for sales.”

Implementation
Titanium Industries was trained by the Invera consulting group who provided the TI Core Team with hands-on experience. Simon Gereige, Senior Consultant at Invera, added, “Titanium saved a lot of time by using the STRATIX metal-specific and process specific end user documentation. TI was able to take the standard documentation we provide, add some additional instructions specific to their company policies, and then provide these to the users for the end user training.”

About Titanium Industries
Titanium Industries, Inc. is the world’s largest metal service center and manufacturing distributor of titanium for aerospace, medical, and general industrial applications. They carry all products required to meet their markets, such as bar, billet, sheet, plate, pipe, fittings, fasteners, weld wire, and tubing, as well as High Performance Metal products marketed under the name HPM that include Nickel Alloys, stainless steel, copper, aluminum, cobalt, and zirconium products. Materials manufactured to ASTM and ASME specifications are available for quick turnaround requirements, as well as longer lead construction requirements.

Titanium Industries’ state-of-the-art facilities include some of the industry’s most sophisticated equipment, with the following processing capabilities: sawing, water jet cutting, and shearing, grinding and planning. Titanium Industries also offers a full array of customer solutions such as Just in Time, Vendor and Customer managed inventory programs, all handled through Stratix to meet the needs of the diverse global customer base.

In addition to their facility and headquarters in Rockaway, New Jersey, Titanium Industries has 11 other metal service center locations in the U.S., Canada, UK, Taiwan, and India, as well as locations in Norway and UK under the wholly owned subsidiary, Global Metal Trading (GMT). The implementations of Canada and Taiwan are both slated for 2010.

About Invera
Invera has been providing steel and metal service center software (ERP) and Internet metal systems for over 25 years. Their metal industry software products, such as STRATIX, are used by more than 13,000 users at over 600 sites in the United States, Europe, Mexico, Canada and the Far East.

For more information, contact Invera at (514)-925-8558 or visit http://www.invera.com.

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