THE COMPANY

J&E/Earll Manufacturing, headquartered in suburban Minneapolis, manufactures and delivers make-to-order custom metal components as well as fabricated, finished and assembled final products for numerous industries including Appliance, Industrial Appliance and Office Equipment. It also provides its own product line of metal cabinets for the gaming industry. In addition to sheet-metal fabrication, stamping and machining operations, the company has capabilities for welding, assembly and automated powder painting. With four facilities in two states, J&E/Earll employs 125.

THE SITUATION

The company has grown extensively over the last few years through acquisition of finishing and fabricating companies. It now is a vertically integrated business that can manufacture finished products from raw materials. The company intends to continue to grow through acquisition, as well as organically, while improving its ability to work with shorter lead times and better delivery performance.

However, J&E/Earll lacked the tools it needed to consistently meet its delivery performance objectives. No formal scheduling or load/capacity capability was available. In the company’s complex fabricating environment, work did not flow properly. Instead, work was consistently subject to expedited shipments, and priorities were constantly shifted as managers worked to put out fires.

THE SOLUTION

Infor recommended integrating its Easy Lean scheduling and planning software into the Infor ERP VISUAL Enterprise software suite that J&E/Earll had previously implemented. Infor’s Throughput Improvement PSO Group also provided an approach to lean manufacturing and tools that enabled the company to use Easy Lean in a highly effective manner. Easy Lean brought pull-oriented scheduling techniques to J&E/Earll’s processes to dramatically reduce manufacturing lead times while boosting on-time delivery and fulfillment rates.

J&E/Earll anticipated that Easy Lean would enable the company to:

• Maintain its current customer base with better delivery and short lead times
• Gain greater market share and new customers by becoming more competitive
• Use cutting-edge tools to manage the increased work flow and loads deriving from its rapid growth
• Roll out formal processes to the companies it was acquiring

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“Easy Lean gave us the right priorities in manufacturing. The more we understood how Easy Lean worked, the better we used it.”

Greg Rabenort General Manger J&E/Earll

REAL RESULTS

Infor’s ERP VISUAL Enterprise has been designated as the single management tool for all the companies acquired by J&E/Earll. “Infor ERP VISUAL Enterprise has been a great help as we’ve acquired companies,” CEO Mike Hansen affirmed. “It provides us with the ability to matrix manage our operations remotely and rapidly transfer work to other facilities with available capacity.”

At the same time, Infor’s Easy Lean has become the single scheduling tool for all of J&E/Earll Manufacturing. Now, 95 percent of all deliveries are on time. General Manager Greg Rabenort noted, “Easy Lean gave us the right priorities in manufacturing. The more we understood how Easy Lean worked, the better we used it.”

Finally, Infor’s Easy Lean has permitted the company to expand while at the same time improving its performance. “Easy Lean allows us to grow,” Rabenort said. “Although powerful, it is easy to learn and use; and with great success we are rolling it out to our other companies on our own. It gives us the visibility we need to see in real time and manage by exception.”

The company expects soon to create a quick-response cell that will handle up to 25 percent of its fabricating production. Hansen is confident that “Easy Lean will allow us to run it easily.”

The real value of Infor’s Easy Lean and ERP VISUAL Enterprise is being demonstrated every day at J&E/Earll Manufacturing with:

• Consistent, integrated and automated processes among all its acquired companies
• A 95% on-time delivery performance level
• An ability to grow rapidly while maintaining top-level performance

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