GHSP

The Challenge:

INNOVATION REQUIRES ACCURATE DATA

GHSP has a long history of adapting to the changes and disruption in its industry. From the start as a metal stamping company for the automotive industry, they adopted an innovative and engineering mindset to apply the technologies developed for one area of the business into the next.

“The transformation to digital or the electronics environment isn’t our first transformation. We’ve done it for years. And, that’s part of the culture, the DNA of the organization, is to constantly reinvent itself. We did it from the transformation to electronics, but we also did it from a stamping company before that and we did it from another company before that. At one point, we were making tractors, so we’ve reinvented ourselves several times,” says Jim Nutt, Vice President of IT at GHSP.

“GHSP is exceptional at growing and transforming into other industries and using core competencies of the company to expand in other markets. A lot of what you’re talking about with the cooktops and other products and different methods of interacting with devices, vehicles, and other things are really core competencies just being pushed into other markets,” explains Daine Shanahan, IT Director at GHSP.

The ability for an organization like GHSP to adapt and grow depends on a number of factors, one certainly being the availability of accurate and real-time data for informed decision making. GHSP needed an agile ERP system to provide that data and enable its rapid growth plans. GHSP was running an older version of QAD ERP that had been heavily customized over time and they needed to upgrade their system to accommodate their growth. Much of the reporting and scheduling was a manual process and held a greater risk for errors. After looking at other ERP vendors, GHSP again chose QAD and to upgrade their current system.

“We choose partners that align with how we work. We are an innovative company that needs to be nimble and move quickly and we need partners that do that too. QAD is absolutely a partner that conducts themselves in that way and the platform they provide allows us to do that,” says Nutt.

The Solution:

QAD ADAPTIVE ERP

Once GHSP determined an upgrade with QAD to QAD Adaptive ERP was the right choice, they set an aggressive timeline for the global deployment. The goal was to go live with sites in the US, Mexico and China within 18 months. The US and Mexico were completed and while the implementation in China was delayed due to the Coronavirus, the teams were able to work closely and complete that project remotely once the GHSP Chinese team resumed production.

“QAD was able to complete the deployment and upgrade the QAD environment globally on the aggressive timeline that we had. Most people would not have believed that could be accomplished. We even had several senior board members compliment us on our ability to not only complete the project on time but with no business disruption,” comments Nutt.

“We have to choose a partner in the ERP system that has the capability for agility because we’re an agile organization. We’re reacting to rapidly changing markets. We can’t spend the time and resources to try to develop this ourselves, so we need a partner that can sit at the table and bring that to us,” explains Nutt.

“Before the upgrade, our various companies were hand keying in the schedules for deliveries. Now, with intercompany EDI, that data is automatically transferred into the solution. It still needs to be validated, but takes much less time and offers better accuracy of the data and less chance of human error in that case. In fact, it’s saved about two hours a day per plant,” says Shanahan.

“The digital transformation of manufacturing for GHSP is really the industry of tomorrow. How are we going to interact with our customers and our suppliers to make a better supply chain to make better products, and continue adapting within the industry and providing what our customers need of us in the future?”

The Benefits:

QAD ADAPTIVE ERP PROVIDES MORE ACCURATE DATA AND STANDARDIZATION OF GLOBAL PROCESSES

With the upgrade in place, GHSP is now able to standardize many processes globally and ensure they are able to maintain consistent reporting practices across their operations - resulting in the ability for better decision making across the organization.

“QAD is really helping us with our global processes. As our company has grown globally some of those processes were allowed to grow up independent of each other. With this upgrade, QAD is helping us align those processes globally,” says Nutt. “We’re creating efficiencies across the globe so that we can do global innovation, global product design and development, and we can do global manufacturing. We can look at capacity globally as opposed to independently in each region. The deployment of QAD in the environment is really giving us that global approach to be consistent across the environment.”

“GHSP is using QAD to become more adaptive in our industry by allowing more accurate data out of the system to actually run reports and business analytics. QAD has helped us adapt and become a little more agile in compiling our data and making that available to our employees so that they can make strategic and, even tactical decisions about deliveries and processes that are out there,” concludes Shanahan.