Executive Spotlight on Jerry Bragalone and Kevin Riddle, Warehouse Manager and Team Leader, Freudenberg-NOK General Partnership

Jerry Bragalone and Kevin Riddle of Freudenberg-NOK General Partnership, agree that it would be nice if their customers wanted every order shipped exactly the same way, without scheduling or packaging requirements.

But the world doesn’t work that way, they concede, and neither should their business system. And now, thanks to a successful QAD implementation led by a FNGP cross-functional team involving the Milan, Ohio Distribution Center staff and Corporate Information Technology team members working together with PICS, it doesn’t.

Executive Spotlight on Jim Ringland, IT Director, Langeveld Bulb Company

The days of working with a single shipping carrier are gone. In today’s world, many businesses work with two, three—even four—package delivery services.

Just ask Jim Ringland of Langeveld Bulb Company. Several years ago, Ringland, IT director at Langeveld, worked to develop functionality that allowed employees to manage UPS shipments right from his MFG/PRO system. At that time, UPS was Langevelds’ sole shipping carrier. As shipping costs started to skyrocket, the company decided the time was right to start negotiating with different carriers.

Executive Spotlight on Gail Mazzella, IT Director, LNK International The laws of business are simple, says Gail Mazzella, IT director at LNK International: Competition drives down price. To maintain lower price points, companies must cut costs. And the only way organizations can cut costs without compromising quality and integrity is through technology.

“You need to automate everything to respond as quickly as possible,” Mazzella says. “We’ve automated purchasing, transfers, shipping – everything we used to do manually.”

For example, several years ago, LNK dedicated one full-time employee to reporting. Accounting, end-of-month, purchasing and other reports often took hours – if not days – to complete.

In any business, quality and reliability are vital to maintain a competitive advantage, a good reputation, and a loyal customer base.

Bill Soule, IT Director at Schefenacker Vision Systems, knows this firsthand. When service levels at his company suffered because of the complexities arising from an increasingly diverse customer base, he contacted PICS for help. “We needed help managing the technology we had in place,” he said.

The challenge: Tweaking customer ship-delivery schedules. Some customers wanted goods delivered on a requirement basis, others asked for parts to ship based on cumulative orders, and still others wanted different types of delivery schedules...