The Result 

I-K-I went live on SAP Business One in March 2021 with no significant operation issues or downtime. The implementation took 18 months, with extensive time spent on system integrations, user training, and data migration. Within 3 months of go-live, I-K-I was able to do business much more quickly and professionally than before. The company’s users increased productivity exponentially, with less manual data entry, fewer human errors, and more accurate data at their fingertips.

“We couldn’t have doubled our volume with our previous technology and manual processes,” explains Andy. The company had reached a wall with their existing infrastructure, and it took making this investment to break through it. “Since going live on SAP Business One, we have been able to increase production from 40 million cans to 80 million cans a year.”

One of the areas where I-K-I has seen the biggest improvements is scheduling. To make a can, the company has 6 to 7 components and several moving supply chains to juggle. In the old system, everything was manual, and any missing pieces would lead to delays and changes to the production schedule. According to Andy, “This process is now completely automated with visual timelines via drag-and-drop order changes. Schedule changes that used to take us an 8-hour day to do manually now take 30 minutes with our Lynq MES integration to SAP Business One.”

Automated reporting and communication are other areas where I-K-I has seen huge impacts. They have improved operational visibility and enhanced communication across the entire company and its growing customer base. “Using SAP cubes, we wrote a custom webpage to show customers their data in real-time, directly from our SAP system,” explains Andy. “It shows them their orders and the date they’re scheduled, an overview of the raw materials for their orders, and summarizations of their monthly capacity. They’ve been blown away because none of our competitors have done this.”

Andy’s advice for other manufacturers is on data migration and partner selection. I-K-I spent a fair amount of time extracting and transforming the data from their old system into the new system. If moving from an antiquated system, he recommends investing in a data migration tool to improve go-live. As for partner selection, his advice is: “To find a partner that will work with you collectively together and be realistic with each other on deadlines. Get a partner that is transparent like Clients First.”