Richco, Inc. Reduces Inventory by 25 Percent and Increases Efficiency with IFS Applications


Itasca, Ill.

Company migrates 10th location to ERP that streamlines intracompany orders

IFS North America customer Richco, Inc., a global manufacturer of plastic components, has good reason to be excited. This month, Richco will go-live with IFS Applications, the enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution of record, at its Italian subsidiary.

Richco is headquartered in Morton Grove, Ill. Richco supplies quality cable management, board management, and fiber management products. Richco also offers custom product design development, 3D tool design and development, and rapid production.

With the implementation of IFS applications, Richco has achieved a number of efficiencies. This includes a 25 percent reduction in inventory levels and reduced administrative time to handle intracompany orders. This is a major part of this business, which operates through multiple subsidiaries in North America, Europe, and Asia.

"The centralized visibility of inventory levels at each of our locations around the globe lets us make much more informed decisions about how much inventory we need to keep relative to sales," Richco Director of Global Information Technology David Bryan said. "We are able to identify regional centers for handling resupplying. Purchasing and manufacturing decisions are simplified."

Richco's ERP solution must not only deal effectively with managing inventory and transactions between multiple global locations, but it must also support multiple languages, currencies and other country-specific requirements for countries such as the United States, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Malaysia and Finland.

"We are a middle market company with challenges more typical of big companies," Bryan said. "We have a global presence, so we have a lot of big company issues even though our total number of employees globally is about 500. We need ERP that will support us doing business in all of these countries. We also have a very strong emphasis on lean here and we need software that supports our lean initiatives. Very large ERP vendors like SAP and Oracle will have all of the international standards and support for lean, but even if a middle market company could afford them, they would still need to consider the commitment involved with implementing these solutions. IFS has a fully functional ERP package that is affordable, flexible, and has a good reputation for implementing in a reasonable amount of time."

Complex industry

Across its various locations, Richco manufactures plastic components in a complex, mixed-mode environment, and yet can run IFS Applications "vanilla," that is, without modifications.

"We run in engineer-to-order as well as repetitive manufacturing for the catalog line," Bryan said. "But we also perform secondary operations on some of our parts to turn one stock-keeping unit (SKU) into a completely different SKU. When someone wants SKU 2, we grab SKU 1 off the shelf and perform a secondary process to it to turn it into SKU 2. IFS Applications handles all of these needs out of the box, including re-identification of the SKU."

"We want IFS Applications to be that solution of choice for complex, demanding industry," IFS North America CEO Cindy Jaudon said. "With its global footprint, mixed-mode environment and commitment to lean, Richco is exactly the type of company that should look to IFS Applications as the ERP solution of choice. Middle market companies like Richco know they need to commit to serve their customers with innovation and care, and they need to expect the same from their ERP vendor. That commitment to complex industry, and to the individuals who run them, is one more reason IFS Applications is the preferred solution of our customers. No other ERP vendor is as singular in its focus or as devoted to ensuring that customers derive value from ERP as IFS."

About Richco

Richco, Inc. provides innovative design solutions to meet a wide range of fastening and routing requirements with focused engineering and manufacturing expertise. Richco offers a wide range of services and capabilities from our strategically placed manufacturing facilities in the United States, United Kingdom, Spain, and China. Our people think globally, but act locally to assure our customers the finest products, service, and responsiveness. Our engineering teams provide our customers with new product design assistance from concept to project completion, and offers application and technical advice on our existing product lines. Richco uses the latest CAD/CAM/Solidworks technology and extensive testing labs, where prototypes and samples can be tested for a wide range of physical and mechanical properties to ensure that they meet all critical performance criteria. More information on Richco, please visit www.richco-inc.com.

About IFS

IFS is a public company (OMX STO: IFS) founded in 1983 that develops, supplies, and implements IFS Applications(TM), a component-based extended ERP suite built on SOA technology. IFS focuses on industries where any of four core processes are strategic: service & asset management, manufacturing, supply chain and projects. The company has 2,000 customers and is present in more than 50 countries with 2,700 employees in total. For more information about IFS, please visit: www.IFSWORLD.com

http://www.ifsworld.com/en-na/news/

Kristy Mills

Marketing Communications

IFS North America

200 S. Executive Drive, Suite 100, Brookfield, WI 53005

Phone 262-317-7400

kristy.mills@ifsworld.com

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