Founded in 1971, Norwalt Design is highly skilled in the construction of custom, high-speed automation machinery. With locations in the U.S. and Taiwan, Norwalt engineers are known for solving simple to complex automation requests from leading plastic injection molders, food packagers, as well as pharmaceutical, personal care, and household product manufacturers.
Accurate customer quotes and timely production relies on adequate inventory. Norwalt needs to know its inventory in real time to estimate project costs and plan lead times for machine parts arriving from multiple suppliers.
Norwalt’s custom machines are engineered using thousands of parts. Creating accurate Purchase Orders was a challenge. For every project, engineers would walk to inventory with a part list, sort through thousands of parts and bins, physically count and allocate parts to specific jobs or sub projects. The resultant list of what parts were needed from what vendors then went to Purchasing to place orders. This timely process slowed product delivery times.
Norwalt Design turned to Bright Software to develop an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. It makes inventory tracking and planning easier, reduces costs, and saves time so customers get their machinery in a timely manner. Shipping/Receiving now knows when parts arrive, where they are, what parts are delayed and can generate part labels from the system. Employees can track vendor pricing over time and monitor how part delays impact whole projects. The system also synchronizes vendor invoices with their accounting system and generates quotes which can be easily emailed to customers.
Norwalt employees now have order screens across all ongoing projects and can negotiate better part pricing on large vendor orders. Plus, Norwalt can more easily fulfill replacement parts for their hundreds of existing customers around the world.
✔ Inventory is streamlined for thousands of parts. Every machinery part is located, ordered, received and paid for through the new ERP system.
✔ Employees can better manage projects and vendors across multiple jobs to make sure they are negotiating for the best price.
✔ Norwalt Design keeps their costs down and can deliver products faster to their customers.
