Wisco Industries

The Company: About Wisco Industries

Wisco Industries is made up of two divisions at three locations totaling 300,000 square feet of manufacturing and assembly operations. The Metal Stamping and Fabrication Division, founded in 1946, supplies OEMs in many industries with precision metal stampings, fabrications, sub-assemblies, and complete products. The Food Service Equipment Division, established in 1968, manufactures and distributes pizza ovens, convection ovens, and heated merchandisers. Manufacturing facilities are located in Oregon, Wisconsin (Headquarters), and Cullman, Alabama.

The Situation: Meet Customer Demands

• Multiple systems, like quality documentation and EDI, did not interface with the company’s on-premise ERP system making it difficult to meet customer demands
• Lost production time due to upgrading locally-hosted ERP software and database servers
• Costs to upgrade to the current ERP version and add more users became prohibitive
  
• Annual physical inventory processes were manual, labor-intensive, time-consuming, and not accurate

The Solution: Plex Manufacturing Cloud ERP

• One, comprehensive ERP system with built-in quality and EDI that makes communication and compliance an operational strategy
• Always current, versionless software with unlimited users and no additional IT infrastructure investments
• Reduced overall inventory by 20% and raw material inventory reduced by 15%
• More efficient shop floor operations with live scheduling and insight into production

The Results: Plex Manufacturing Cloud ERP Implementation Benefits

Soon after connecting with Plex, the Wisco team met Patti Nowak from Control+M Solutions, LLC. — a former Plex customer turned consultant. Patti and her team guide manufacturing companies through Plex implementations leveraging solution architect experience and expertise to ensure a successful outcome. 

“Wisco really focused on their implementation project and had excellent leadership with the core team and upper management that encouraged discipline and thoughtful work. Those qualities when you’re managing a project are key — especially with an ERP change,” said Nowak. 

Wisco saw the value the Control+M team brought to the table in helping the company focus on optimizing its Plex implementation. 

“Patti was the captain of the ship leading us in the right direction. We didn’t have a person like Patti on our team and needed her to come in and kind of steer us in that area. It’s been really helpful,” said Mike O’Malley, Controller. 

The live scheduling and visibility Wisco gained with the Plex Manufacturing Cloud has had a great effect on shop floor operations. Employees are using the Control Panel to record the production of all materials, and this has dramatically improved efficiency. 

“Materials are now flowing better through the shop floor instead of having all this inventory sitting there waiting for something to happen. Plex has definitely made us more efficient,” said John Brayshaw. 

Now the company can use live scheduling to respond quicker to customer requests without affecting other customer orders or stopping and re-starting production. Wisco can see at any moment what’s being done at any work center on the shop floor, who the employee is, levels of production rates or quality, and the checks that are in progress or completed.