How SPI companies grew their business in 2 months by using AltheaSuite

Introduction

SPI Companies is a privately owned company that specializes in manufacturing Cabinets and Cabinetry parts. They are situated in Rosewell, GA and their motto is to provide customers with the most affordable and high-quality finishing of cabinetry.
SPI Companies was redirected to us through a consulting firm that was put in charge to manage expectations regarding onboarding a new Inventory Management System. Once their team evaluated all aspects of AltheaSuite, they felt quite confident as they found it a perfect fit for their client’s requirements.

Initial Challenges they encountered

After an extensive search for Inventory Management solutions, they realized that most software out there were able to somehow manage their business flow but couldn’t nail it down to their evolving business.

  • Business Specific Solution:
    They were in need of a software solution that would not just help them solve their Stock management-related problems but also be able to mold itself along the way as their new business strategies and workflows came to life.
  • Quick Barcode Scanning / Printing:
    They understood the need of Barcode Scanning and how essential it was for any business to help cut down redundant time during different operations of manufacturing.
    They hence wanted to be able to scan and print barcodes from the system effortlessly.
  • Bill Of Material Management:
    Their business revolved around assembling and manufacturing cabinets of different dimensions, sizes, and colors. All of these orders had a huge number of smaller parts and components that would be utilized to complete that order. Hence there was a need to understand what all raw materials and components were actually required to manufacture a finished product for their client.
  • Manufacturing and Assembling Products on the go:
    Most of the orders coming in from the customers were very specific to a customer’s requirement. Since each requested product was different from what any other customer would want, there was a dire need to create Finished Products with different constituents and BOM definitions on the go.
  • Understanding the Estimated Cost and Stock Availability for an Order:
    When a particular order came in, the team wanted to prepare a Manufacturing Plan that would list all Finished Products along with their respective components and parts required. The need to create a Manufacturing Plan was to understand if they had the required products available in the stock (if not then create a plan to procure what’s needed). Also, before starting off with the manufacturing process understand what was the overall estimated cost based on the cost of the raw materials required.

     

The Solution

Through the initial product demonstrations, AltheaSuite was liked by SPI Companies because of it’s simple and self-illustrative UI design. Further down the road, they also understood the sufficient time that was saved while uploading the stock and seamlessly going through the whole order management process through AltheaSuite.

  • AltheaSuite truly acted as a Business specific solution to SPI Companies. While going through the Implementation phase we realized few functionality-related gaps that were out of the project scope after initial discussions. After realizing that the requested features would help their business deal with orders quicker, our dev team went ahead and bridged those gaps within the subscription cost.
  • AltheaSuite’s team helped to create barcode stickers which were printed on Zebra printers. 
  • AltheaSuite’s has barcode scanning ability integrated across all screens of AltheaSuite. This helped SPI Companies to locate products, look at stock availability and order allocation history for each item and many more functions through a Zebra barcode scanner.
  • Starting from positioning the stock while it comes into the warehouse to its final dispatch, all used barcode scanning for quicker operations.
  • The Bill of Material management consisted of pre-defining the set of components that went into a Finished Product. The item creation and BOM material upload process was facilitated through a quick Excel Upload that shortened the time required to set up these product definitions. Furthermore, while compiling the list of BOM components, AltheaSuite also was able to tell SPI companies what the total product cost price was based on the set BOM components.
  • On top of specifying a pre-set list of items in BOM, AltheaSuite also gave capability to change these constituent quantities or components names at the time of manufacturing/assembling the order. This ensured that SPI Companies had enough flexibility to make any last minute changes and see it’s actionable impact on stock and cost price of the overall order. 
  • AltheaSuite gave SPI Companies the capability to streamline all Order Management Operations in a synchronous flow. The first step was to create a Manufacturing Plan which helps them analytically look at stock availability across the required warehouse. This was efficiently linked with automated PO generation, that helped them purchase the items required to complete the Order or request short stock from other warehouses.
  • In the Plan they were able to comprehensively look at the overall Order Cost and also individual contribution of each Finished Product in the cost.

The SuCcess

SPI Companies were distressed because of the disarray and inorder that was created while trying to manage all processes in fulfilling an Order. And since the implementation of AltheaSuite, they now move forward with a structured approach while having the control of all variables in the process. Conceptualizing the end goal was made very easy because of the team’s ability to quickly understand all inner workings of AltheaSuite.
Through Althea’s quick support staff the SPI team have found it incredibly easy to transition into AltheaSuite in a very short period of time. They are looking forward to consolidating their trust in us by referring more customers to AltheaSuite platform. 

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