History dictates that if you do something for a long time, you probably have gotten pretty good at doing it. But what happens when you want to make improvement or automate the process?
RO-MATT faced the same challenge when considering how to streamline their entire manufacturing process. In the two and a half decades of being in business, they have gotten pretty good at job set up, releasing a project for manufacture, procurement of materials and commercial items, manufacturing, sub-contracting, job tracking, building, transportation and invoicing. But when it comes to automating this specific practice, they faced a bit of a roadblock. Sure there are a bunch of ERP and MRP software to choose from, in a variety of capabilities and price ranges, but simply put, you are purchasing what someone else has created and are being forced into following the process that has been pre-determined. What do you do if you want to automate your own, individual, process?
“We elected to design our own manufacturing process software,” states Steven Del Duca, President of RO-MATT. “We have looked at 3-4 out of the box solutions, but all of them forced us to abandon the way we do things and follow the path of their program.” This is a big problem, especially when you have honed your craft as well as RO-MATT has. RO-MATT created a fast and simple way to handle all the aspects of their business, using a combination of Microsoft Office software and manual processes. All they needed to do was consolidate this into one program so that everything is interconnected and in one place.
RO-MATT started to interview software developers which brought them to the door of AlphaKOR Group. AlphaKOR is a locally based company dealing with digital marketing, IT services and custom software development; a perfect fit for what RO-MATT was seeking. Building on AlphaKOR’s ShopTALK Manufacturing Management platform, they started the customization process to take RO-MATT’s day-to-day practices and put them into clean, fast and streamlined software, with an appealing interface and a ton of capability.
To get the most for their money, RO-MATT was able to secure a grant from the Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE) to cover 50% of the software development, implementation and training cost. “We were able to get much more going this route, rather than purchasing a boxed solution”, Del Duca explains. “Furthermore, we are able to continue to use our process and not someone else’s, which is very important for us.”
Launch is scheduled for the spring of 2020. AlphaKOR is in the final development stages if the customization and RO-MATT is BETA testing the software for the final tweaks. “Everyone is excited to get started using this new platform. We’re estimating a 30-40% increase in efficiency to our daily operations and a more effective way to reference historical information.”