The Company
Hayward Gordon Ltd. designs, manufactures and distributes process
equipment; products and systems relating to pumping, mixing, filtration,
and bulk solids handling. With 78 employees and branch locations in
Vancouver, Calgary and Montreal, Hayward Gordon is headquartered in
Halton Hills, Ontario, where its custom-built, 50,000-sq.ft. office and plant
facility opened in the fall of 2006.
The company serves a wide variety of industries. Although it is particularly
strong in mining and waste-water treatment, Hayward Gordon also works
with a wide variety of process industries: chemical processing, food processing,
pulp and paper – even the automotive industry needs pumps
for paint.
As a result of the company’s mining specialization, Hayward Gordon has
established a growing global presence. The company as a whole is very
strong in North America, but is also exporting a good deal of equipment
to South America and other parts of the world. It currently has projects
destined for countries such as Madagascar, Australia, Dominican Republic,
Mexico and Chile.
< The Challenge
Over the past few years, the company has faced a major challenge –
the strengthening of the Canadian dollar.
John Hayward, Company President, says: “That’s put immense pressure
on us to become more productive, and to reduce our costs. In response,
we have been implementing LEAN practices, which has a lot to do with
leveraging our Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). We underwent an
extensive business-process mapping project to find areas in which we
could create efficiencies, and many of the ways we chose to streamline
our business involve the use of SYSPRO.“
< The Solution
In 1990, Hayward Gordon decided to run its operations on SYSPRO ERP
software. “We went through a number of false starts before settling on
SYSPRO,” says Hayward. “We used other ERP packages, and even tried to
make one ourselves. When we realized what an immense task it would
be to create and maintain our own ERP, we went back to the market, and
eventually chose SYSPRO.”

The decision to invest in SYSPRO was based on three main
considerations. “Firstly, the work we do is highly varied –
we’re more of a job shop than build-to-stock. We felt that
SYSPRO’s Bill of Materials (BOM), Work in Progress (WIP), and
Requirements Planning modules lent themselves well to a
job-shop environment,” Hayward says.
“Secondly, SYSPRO’s integration of operations and finance
was excellent – far better than anything else we looked
at. Finally, we wanted to be sure that the ERP we chose
would be properly maintained and supported. Many of
the ERP companies we considered back then don’t exist
anymore. SYSPRO has stayed, and has supported its
product very well.”
< The Result
Hayward Gordon has implemented electronic time
tracking in the shop, and has automated its labor
posting function. “We get the tracking in real time now
and, by having SYSPRO do it, we’ve been able to eliminate
a data entry position,” Hayward says. “We’ve
also integrated Microsoft CRM (Customer Relationship
Management) directly into SYSPRO, thereby automating
our order entry. Now people in the field can enter their
orders automatically, eliminating the need for duplicate
entry.”
HAYWARD GORDON
May 2011, Canada
In the near future, the company plans to implement electronic
funds transfer (EFT) to streamline its payables. “The
timing for all these efficiencies has been good, because
despite the market challenges, we’ve been seeing some
growth. Getting more out of SYSPRO has allowed us to
expand without breaking apart at the seams,” Hayward
points out.
In addition to reducing costs, leveraging SYSPRO has
helped Hayward Gordon to reliably meet its lead times.
The company realized that it had to compress its lead
times and make them more reliable.
“We’ve taken a number of steps that take advantage of
the fact that processes that used to run consecutively
can now run concurrently,” Hayward says. “For example,
when an order is entered, it gets reviewed and the credit
check is triggered along with a customer number request
– all electronically and all at the same time. Previously, a
paper file would spend many days travelling to multiple
departments for approval before the order was placed.
Now, if there’s a problem with the order, action can be
taken right away. It’s much more efficient, and it’s helping
us serve our customers better.”
Commenting on SYSPRO’s ROI, Hayward says: “We’ve
seen our revenue per employee increase by around sixtyfive
percent in the past four years. You can’t do that unless
you build into your company the ability to grow sales without
growing costs in lockstep. If you don’t have the right
infrastructure in place, your sales can even cost more
to make than they’re worth. That’s what productivity is
about – if you have the right systems in place it gives your
company extra capacity, without adding costs. That’s the
way we’ve been able to measure what SYSPRO has done
for us.
“We’re very happy with SYSPRO: the product, the support,
and the ongoing development. The fact that we’ve been
with it as long as we have says a lot. We continue to build
it into our operations in a very important way.”