Plex's SaaS Driven Manufacturing Solutions Prove Effective for WTS

Plex Systems reportedly announced that Waukesha Tool & Stamping (WTS (News - Alert)) has gone live with select modules of Plex Online, it’s manufacturing industry solution suite, and has already experienced benefits such as quicker dispatches and faster responses to customer queries.

It all began with WTS’s quest for speeding up and streamlining data exchange within its company departments and multiple locations that led to a meeting with Plex allegedly in mid-2008. Plex and WTS eventually agreed on the mutually beneficial and popular route of Software as a Service (SaaS (News - Alert)), as reported by TMC, that permits customers to selectively procure appropriate modules from an entire range of solutions.

SaaS drastically cuts down upfront cumulative licence costs since these are now broken down into affordable smaller elements. IT support resources such as staff, network equipment, installation fees and annual maintenance contracts are kept to a minimum. With lesser pre-installed information to wade through, systems become more agile and corrective measures require lesser bandwidth, are more focussed and can be done remotely.

Plex has set up for WTS a system that links and co-ordinates the design, stores, shop floors, security, marketing, sales, service, purchase, administration, HR and accounts departments across Sussex, Wisconsin and McAllen.

The entire Plex Online suite has more than 350 modules to make up a comprehensive solution. WTS, however, uses only a few of these to effectively run the show: quotes, accounts and finance from the ERP set; design document flow, quality and machine integration from the MES package; order tracking from the CRM options; vendor management from the SCM offerings; and overall project resource planning.

"Plex is already giving us more reliable data on our costs, saving us time in the customer service area, streamlining purchasing and planning, and helping us better manage our manufacturing and quality," said Nancy Nyhan, Controller, Waukesha Tool & Stamping. "We have also accelerated our shipping and receiving operations through the use of bar code scanner technology."