Unionwear, a custom-made baseball cap, tote bags, and apparel manufacturer based in Newark, NJ, operates in a challenging market. The clothing and apparel industry in America has seen a significant decline, with the percentage of clothing and apparel consumed by Americans that is made in America dropping from 95% in 1960 to about 2% today. Additionally, the apparel spending by the average US household has dropped from $4,300 to $1,700, and the percentage of household spending on apparel has dropped from about 10% in 1960 to 3.5% today. As a result, the apparel industry employment has contracted from an average employment of 902,000 in 1960 to about 136,000 today. Unionwear, however, has been able to succeed in this challenging market by embracing lean manufacturing and continuous improvement.

Northeast Lantern, a manufacturer of handcrafted, solid brass and copper lighting fixtures, was relying on a system of management by spreadsheet. As the company grew, the spreadsheets became more of a problem than a solution. With no formal system for inventory or engineering and no single database, the company was struggling with growth. They had no control over their inventory because they didn’t know at any one time what they had in inventory for a specific part, finished good or subassembly. Reporting was also a manual task that was time-consuming and inefficient. The company knew that further growth would require a modern ERP solution.

As OSI grew, maintaining their high-quality metrics became increasingly difficult due to their reliance on an older, locally developed ERP system with limited capabilities. Many of their production, operations, and quality processes were managed manually, relying on spreadsheets and even pen and paper to record and track data. This resulted in errors, slow processes, and a lack of visibility into costs, inventory, time, compliance, and more. OSI needed a solution that could modernize their operations and eliminate these barriers to growth.

Pioneer Motor Bearing, a family-owned company that has been repairing, manufacturing, and designing fluid-film bearings for the power generation and industrial markets for 100 years, was struggling with an on-premise ERP solution. The system was unable to provide a 360-degree view of a customer, which was crucial for improving customer relationships and providing quick access to relevant information. The company was looking for a streamlined order processing system that could seamlessly transition from RFQ to quote to sales order. However, their on-premise ERP system required them to re-enter all of the same product information. Estimating, a critical process in Pioneer's job-shop environment, still required lots of manual processes and didn't capture historical customer information in one place. Reporting was another issue. The company realized that it would take major implementation work and disruption to their business just to keep their on-premise ERP system active.

SPR Therapeutics, a medical device company specializing in neurostimulation technology, was facing challenges with their internal systems, including CRM, inventory management and quality management. These systems were disconnected, inefficient, and made poor use of critical data. The company was using an assortment of separate unintegrated applications, which led to disconnected silos of information and frustrating inefficiencies. One of the key components of the company’s quality management system was a simple document control application. Another significant problem for the young company was inefficient complaint processing. Handling complaints is an essential part of customer feedback, quality and compliance for any medical device company. Even though sales volume was growing, the company was falling behind on processing and resolving complaints. Complaints were tracked manually, which made it challenging to keep up with every detail.

In 2015, Summit Imaging was encountering growing pains from increased demand from healthcare facilities seeking their high-quality products and services. They had been using manual processes to enter data into three disparate systems, and this solution was not providing the instant information that was needed to continue to serve their customers. The company, which repairs ultrasound and mammography equipment, found that their old way of doing things was preventing growth. Everything was done by paper or with redundant data entry. Reporting was frequently completed a month after the transactions closed. Their three separate systems didn’t communicate with each other. They had no access to critical data from a mobile device. But perhaps most frustrating of all was the fact that as a repair company, they needed instant repair information to refine operations.

Aphria Inc., one of the largest and fastest-growing cannabis companies in the world, was facing growing pains due to its rapid expansion. The company had to increase production capacity and manage it optimally to support strong growth and supply emerging cannabis markets. This was complicated by their worldwide footprint, with offices spread across the globe from the Caribbean to Australia, Africa to South America, encompassing more than 22 locations. The company was also faced with a daunting need for efficiency, productivity, and control due to the highly regulated nature of the cannabis industry. Their situation was exacerbated by their lack of modern, enterprise-ready technology. They needed more control, but also technology that could support their compliance demands.