Ruby Overton started Overton & Sons Tool & Die Company, Inc. in 1968, in a small, two-car garage. Today, the company is run by Ruby’s three sons, Ron, Rick, and Steve Overton, more widely known as Overton Industries. Their Tool & Die and Stamping Divisions are in Mooresville, Indiana, and their Tube Forming and Special Machines Automation Systems division is in Franklin, Indiana.

With over 55 years of experience and just under 100 employees, Overton Industries continues to maintain its strong reputation for quality, service, and competitive pricing.

“Servicing such a wide variety of customers in various industries with a product offering as diverse as ours means that we have to stay ahead of the curve in all facets of our business and continue to challenge the use of our ERP system,” says Rick Jasper, controller of Overton Industries.

A lean staff and a complicated business system that generates a lot of data.

Overton operates with a very lean administrative staff that keeps costs down but demands more and more from the accounting staff. Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Payroll, HR, and upper management are all challenged to see more data, process more data, and manage more data to ensure all areas of the ERP system and all areas of the company are visible and managed well. Nothing is worse than trying to grow and expand a business using flawed or incomplete data.

“We use a lot of smart coding in our ERP system, which helps us to manage the various parts of our business well, but it also makes the system somewhat complex and very sophisticated,” Rick explains. “The more sophisticated we make it, the more details of every record we have to manage and maintain. The need for information is never less, it’s always more—and having quicker access to data is vital to our business.”

So, how do you manage mountains of data without adding staff?

Rick says, “We purchased KnowledgeSync events, alerts, workflow, and reporting software from ECI Software Solutions, and it’s been a welcomed solution to our needs. It probably saves us a thousand hours or more each year by having events that are triggered when certain conditions exist in the system.”

“Keeping our system clean and free from user errors or free from user omissions gives us more confidence in our numbers and speeds our decision-making ability,” he adds.

What’s nice about KnowledgeSync is that it works for nearly any database and ERP system; in some cases, it may come with a host of prewritten events. “We capture, flag, and correct errors now within hours rather than days or weeks, Rick says.

Using the software is easy. As Rick puts it, “If you can define the event and write the event, KnowledgeSync will deliver whatever you ask it to.”

KnowledgeSync integrates seamlessly with the ERP, drawing information from data sources and capturing real-time information and milestones. Events are written that trigger alerts when certain situations occur, allowing stakeholders to take quick action. It can also trigger automatic daily reports that deliver critical insight into specific business areas.

Overton uses KnowledgeSync mainly for alerts and reports. “Every morning, I walk in, and I have a list of finished goods inventory, raw materials inventory, all the orders and quotes created the day before, and a list of all the raw materials on order. I don’t have to run a single report; I just open my email, and there it is. If I don’t have any questions, I can just move on with my day,” Rick relates.

Before KnowledgeSync, a staff member might have been tasked to run a host of reports manually, using up paper and wasting a lot of time, and then perhaps distributing those reports manually to people who needed them.

“Now, when I get a daily Inventory report delivered to my email inbox, I know that five other staff members have received the same report, delivered at the same time. We can all review and work off the same data with confidence, and no one had to run or even distribute the report.”

“We’ve probably created 100 events over time, and about 50 of them are presently active. It keeps the integrity of the system in place. I get probably 30 or 40 alerts first thing in the morning. If I notice something unusual in one of those alerts, say a user forgot to populate a field, I simply forward the email to the user, and they have all the information they need in the body of the email to correct their job or fix their record. It’s simply done that quickly, and we move on.”

KnowledgeSync helps the company manage order entry, inventory, purchasing, sales, quoting, AR, AP, Quality, POs, Rework, and the list goes on.

Rick relates, “There is not a department within our company that can’t benefit from the use of KnowledgeSync. In my opinion, it’s one of the best investments we’ve made.”

He shares an example:

“Several years ago, our Quality Assurance person would run a report that would show any rework hours during the week or the month and review that report and the details therein. He would then try to track down the job, the operator, and all the details associated with that rework so that he could write corrective actions and improve our processes and procedures. But by the time those reports were run, and by the time he made his inquiries, there might be seven days, or 10 days, elapsed, and details about the rework were getting harder and harder to acquire. We decided to write an event in KnowledgeSync, and it changed everything. The moment that one of our operators would post Rework time to a job, KnowledgeSync would kick off an email and deliver it directly to the QA’s inbox. The email contained the operator’s name, the job that he posted the rework time to, the Work Center, and the number of hours that were reported. Now, QA is aware of this rework in real-time. He can quickly go out to the operator and ask about the Rework, where it came from, how it was handled, and what we could do better next time. It’s fresh in everyone’s mind, and it’s never been easier!”

“Having KnowledgeSync is like having a personal assistant monitoring your data for you so that you don’t have to. It makes you more aware, it saves you time, and it improves your efficiency.”

In the example above, QA didn’t have to run any reports in the ERP system. The event runs 24/7 in the background, and only when those criteria match the event will an email be created and sent to QA’s inbox. They do not have to take time to run a report or scroll through a 10-page report looking for specific details—everything needed is delivered to QA’s inbox within minutes. “The time he used to invest in gathering this data changed dramatically,” Rick shares.

Events don’t have to be hard to define, dramatic, or profound to justify creating them. Rick continues, “We’ve got an event that was written to tell us if any operator was clocked in over 10 hours on any given day. This helps to ensure that overtime beyond two hours on any given day is accurate. It lets us know which employee is working the overtime and which Work Center he is tied to.”

Another example he relates is that “On certain jobs, many sub-assemblies have to be pulled together and completed before the product can be shipped. Each sub-assembly has a milestone date. We have an event that lets management know if a particular sub-assembly has missed its milestone date. A quick phone call to the Project Manager can help ensure that everyone knows why and what’s needed to get back on schedule. Why wait for the next Monday morning huddle to find out that we are behind on that part of the job?”

It even helps manage the supply chain. “We have an event that automatically lets our people in Purchasing, as well as Shipping and Receiving, know which line items on POs are due to arrive today and which are due to arrive tomorrow. It gives them a heads-up on what items are expected to arrive and from which vendors. Any ’heads-up‘ that you can give these people helps.”