With locations in Nebraska, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Mexico, creating consistency in information systems became an important goal for Lincoln Industries. In the past, the Minnesota and Wisconsin facilities operated on disparate legacy ERP systems lacking functionality required to support the business. Starting in February of 2019, the Minnesota facility integrated into Lincoln Industries core ERP system, followed by phased implementations in Wisconsin in January and September of 2020.
Slavic Stepanyuk, Information Systems Manager, played a vital role in these integrations. “The biggest hurdle we faced was the lack of a centralized source of information across the enterprise and tools available to support the business objectives at all levels,” Stepanyuk said.
An integrated enterprise resource planning system created synergies throughout all business areas. Lincoln Industries now has clear visibility of the supply chain and the manufacturing stages of all products.
“The former systems weren’t working efficiently, often creating manual processes, lowering productivity, and inviting room for error,” stated Stepanyuk. “With integrated ERP, we’re able to leverage the system to gain efficiencies in many areas, including planning, inventory control, supply chain management, and finance. We’re also able to have better tools for performance tracking and analysis.”
Lincoln Industries created a team including Slavic Stepanyuk, Bryan Fralin, Katie Hazsard, and Kaleb Nixon from Lincoln, Nebraska, while Nate Honeck and Jeff Fischer supported the transition in Wisconsin. Their priorities included forecasts, sales orders, and full integration of parts into the system. Lincoln’s team’s experience and Wisconsin’s teams’ adaptability enabled the deployment plans execution in a short amount of time without any business interruptions.
Planning Manager Nate Honeck is grateful for the integration. “It’s made huge improvements for the Wisconsin and Mexico teams. We now have real-time visibility to our inventory and the ability to run MRP (Material Requirements Planning), which allows us to react to changes in demand quickly to continue to support our customers. From the production side, it’s given us great visibility to respond to customers’ needs when it comes to ordering adjustments,” he said. “It’s still a learning process, but the team has taken the change in stride,” stated Honeck.
Though there were undoubtedly challenges initially, Lincoln Industries has learned to utilize the system to support all business areas, which is the driver behind the push to extend it to all locations. “It’s important for us to share best practices and leverage our strengths to replicate the things we’ve learned and developed over the years in all of our facilities and locations,” said Stepanyuk.
Read more stories from Lincoln Industries in our 2020 Annual Report.
