Lindquist Machine's Lean Journey to ETO ERP Leader Encompix

Lindquist Machine Corporation (LMC) builds custom machines for U.S. and international customers. For over 50 years LMC has been solving customers' problems in industries such as food, printing, paper, film, construction, and power tools. LMC started the implementation process at the beginning of January 2005. After a four-month implementation, LNC went live with Encompix on May 1, 2005. Although it is still early days Joe Zimmer, CFO, is looking forward to big improvements. "We expect a significant reduction in paperwork and to streamline our office processes. Our goal is to reduce the office lead time from 10 days to 2-3 days. Encompix will also provide us with greater visibility of job status and provide clear assembly instructions to production staff. We are confident that we will meet our objective of ROI within 24 months, hopefully sooner." In January 2000 LMC embarked on a Lean journey so it was essential that the new ERP system supported these initiatives. "Our goal is to work towards World Class Manufacturing. We want to eliminate 95% of internal transactions and automate 95% of external transactions. Before Encompix we were running at about 25%, with Encompix we expect a big leap forward to 70%," said Zimmer. According to ETO Institute (www.etoinstitute.org) spokesperson, Thomas R. Cutler,