How This Digital Fabricator Manages Three Plant Locations with Ease

Modern Cup teams are a showcase for technological advancements in the fields of hydrodynamics, aerodynamics, and composite construction techniques. John Barnitt and Scott Vogel, the President and Vice President of Symmetrix Composite Tooling, have a long history of collaboration on sailing teams and in the composite mast business. They have the unique benefit of not only having been part of many America’s Cup teams but also having won the trophy with Dennis Conner’s Stars & Stripes crew in 1987.

John spent several years in the composites industry, primarily managing projects, operations, and sales for a leading sailboat mast manufacturer. He founded Symmetrix in 2015 out of a partnership in a tooling manufacturing business and Scott joined the company in 2017 as VP.

We sat down with John Barnitt and Scott Vogel to talk about their business expansion and implementation of M1. The pair advanced the growth objectives of the company, and Scott’s first task was to manage the implementation of the industry-specific ERP solution.

With a growing order book, the company embarked on a five-year plan to expand capacity. Rather than trying to grow the existing campus with a limited footprint and an equally limited labor pool, the decision was made to replicate operations in other locations. The result was three factories in three different states spanning the country.

QuickBooks was limiting in providing the data needed for job cost analysis, quoting, and scheduling. Scott knew one of the first tasks would be to upgrade to a more powerful ERP system with accounting.

After narrowing down and investigating three options, the team determined that ECI M1 was the right choice because of its focus on small-to-midsize manufacturing companies, compatibility with Symmetrix processes, and ability to handle multiple locations.

M1 implementation was the first step in the expansion. Two new facilities, each modeled off the original factory in Bristol, Rhode Island, were added. The second shop is in Minden, Nevada, and the third is in Statesville, North Carolina. All three facilities are managed in the same M1 database using the multi-plant features. Scott says, “From an accounting and ERP standpoint, setting up the new facilities was painless. The original Rhode Island setup was recreated for two more divisions using the same chart of accounts, production departments, and operations.”

“The implementation process went very well,” Scott recalls with a smile. “Our project manager, Heather Gourley, kept us on task and on schedule and Kyle Cordry, our onsite implementation consultant, did a great job of learning our business so he could advise us on setup that would complement our operation. Rather than bend our methods to suit M1 we were able to mold the M1 setup to match how we run the business.”

The M1 installation is a single database set up with three plants, each with the same number of work centers and each accessing the same process IDs. Each factory is responsible for its own scheduling, inventory, hiring, and day-to-day operational management.

Scott says, “This solved several concerns for us. Everything we make is a custom oneoff, but our overriding goal for the three factories is to have parity in everything that happens from administration through operations. Our customers should not be able to tell which factory their product is coming from.”

M1 allows each site to access every job and monitor costs and schedules to refine their own projects. Each team member also has access to warehouse data and regularly “purchase” from each other. Scott remarks, “It is difficult to put an ROI to our M1 purchase in that we knew from the start that we would need a more powerful ERP solution to achieve our goals. The return for us is that we can manage and measure the business as we envisioned it.”

He recalls, “With a strong customer base presenting the opportunity and need to expand capacity, the challenges were how to grow the physical size of the manufacturing facility, and how to increase the size of the workforce. Space limitations and a tight labor market led us to expand to two different locations rather than try to expand the existing campus. This not only got us into new labor pools but brought us closer to new potential customers.”

Among the most important benefits the team has appreciated, Scott says, “Realtime visibility on job performance has been a big bonus. Most of our projects run over the course of multiple months (hours per part, not parts per minute!). We create a dashboard for each job with data pulled using Spreadsheet Server that is reviewed each week during our program review session. In addition to job performance, we are creating reports on process efficiency relative to estimates, unabsorbed labor, and revenue projections. Supervisors regularly use timecard reports to track accuracy of clock-ins.”

M1 has also enabled the team to manage the supply chain through recent material shortages and inflation. “The ability to see inventories in each warehouse has given us flexibility to manage our material needs through internal supply when our vendors are unable to fulfill our requirements. There is a cost associated with this, but it is a bigger problem if we are forced to stop a project while we wait for materials,” says John.