Handling Specialty Manufacturing Ltd.
From 1988 to 1993 we experienced increasing sales and declining margins. We had a good team, a solid product line and proper facilities. But our custom product growth had brought added complexity that our office process couldn't handle efficiently.
We had logbooks in every department recording numbers. We couldn't get job costs until well after the project was shipped. People were wasting time searching for information. Engineering was bogged down in paperwork and Purchasing was overwhelmed by the impact of changes throughout the project. Worst of all, confidence was low.
Then we set our manual system aside and put in the original version of Questica 2000. The idea was to integrate Sales, Engineering, Purchasing and Production into one system to eliminate duplication and get real time data. The results were dramatic.
From 1993 to 1998, like many other firms, we doubled our sales. The difference was that we did it with 10.3% less design and shop hours than in 1993 and with zero increase in inventory. This resulted in an average increase of profits of 250% over the previous five-year period. More importantly, the paper chaos was eliminated and morale soared.
We like Questica 2000 because it is intuitive, practical and handles the dynamic changes unique to an engineer -to-order business.
Dennis Parass
President, Handling Specialty
