SYSPRO Case Study

VEMCO

Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

The Company

VEMCO, a division of Amirix Systems Inc., designs and manufactures underwater acoustic telemetry equipment for tracking the behavior of marine life and is one company that is quite proud when its business is described as being underwater! VEMCO is located near a scenic ocean cove south of Halifax, Nova Scotia known more for its tourist appeal than its hi-tech manufacturing.

For over 20 years VEMCO has designed and exported acoustic telemetry equipment to fisheries, biologist and aquatic research organizations in 49 countries worldwide to assist scientists in studying underwater sea life. An example of one of their many products is a device to track the activities of salmon swimming down inland rivers to the ocean.

The Challenge

VEMCO products involve complex engineering specifications designed to meet individual customer requirements. Every incoming sales order demands an electro-mechanical configuration tailored to the exact needs of a specific aquatic project such as transmitters built with a wide range of options for transmission frequency and underwater sensors.

The company’s success is largely dependent on its ability to build and deliver highly customized equipment. Generating product specifications quickly and accurately for new customer orders is vital to achieve a competitive edge. Ten years ago, VEMCO contracted a programmer to develop software to automatically configure products and produce bills of material and production work orders for the plant. Over a period of years, the programmer did a good job and created quite an elaborate application to accomplish this.

As business continued to expand, the vision of a more fully integrated enterprise wide system became increasingly appealing especially as concerns about on-going support for the custom-developed programs continued to grow. As a result VEMCO launched a search for a top-rated manufacturing and accounting software solution that would deliver most of their needs with a single software solution - including a truly sophisticated Product Configurator module.

The Solution

Strong local support was identified early as an essential factor to aid in achieving VEMCO’s commitment to deliver the highest possible level of service to its customers and naturally VEMCO wanted to acquire all this at an affordable price. After a thorough software selection process VEMCO selected SYSPRO as their software of choice to achieve all this.

Fred Voegeli, President, gladly explains how SYSPRO is being used at VEMCO today: "SYSPRO software has streamlined our production systems by creating one highly integrated solution - starting right at the sales order desk with the Product Configurator module. This approach is highly cost effective because our Engineering design team predefine all the allowable options, ranges, and other rules into the Product Configurator. This enables the Sales Order department to competently configure complex engineer-to-order products."

The Product Configurator creates the parent part number as a stocked part so that its serial number can be tracked and it also creates the shop floor work orders automatically. In addition, it enables us to create jobs without a permanent Bill of Materials (BOM) so that we avoid an unnecessarily large BOM file. The component sub-assemblies are created as phantom parts so that separate jobs are not required for lower level assemblies. The Configurator flattens the BOM’s required for a job so that all parts can be withdrawn from inventory without the need to first build the sub-assemblies.

The Results

"Our production team really appreciates SYSPRO software because it simplifies the booking and issuing of materials to jobs on the shop floor. Engineering also appreciates it because it also retains the flexibility to show all levels of a BOM from a product design perspective."

Voegeli goes on to say: "Our Sales and Marketing Manager really likes our ability to use SYSPRO for literally everything we sell. There is no question that the part numbers assigned are all correct! Our Production Manager enjoys the fact that the status of every customer order is clearly shown in the system from start to finish. In fact, the SYSPRO solution facilitates teamwork among the staff in all departments. Our company accountant feels SYSPRO software puts a lot of information at our fingertips. Virtually anything we need to know is just a click away. The information is very structured and very detailed which we really like because it makes it much easier to analyze what’s on the books."

Mr. Voegeli concludes, "Our decision to implement SYSPRO has turned out to be an excellent choice. One of the key determining factors was SYSPRO software’s flexibility. VEMCO was most impressed by SYSPRO’s ability to handle our company’s requirements. The strong manufacturing functionality of SYSPRO software has made it a great investment."