Miller-St. Nazianz

Founded in 1899, Miller-St. Nazianz, Inc., manufactures and supports more than 20 product lines of agricultural equipment for forage harvesting, livestock feeding, manure handling, and crop spraying. Companies and brand names include Badger Farm Systems, Miller Application Technologies, Miller Pro, Victor (a product line sold and serviced exclusively by John Deere® dealers), and Miller Finance Corporation.

The challenge

Although its existing ERP system was adequate, Miller-St. Nazianz wanted to upgrade to a more sophisticated, state-of-the-art business solution that would integrate all aspects of the enterprise.

“Our previous system was pretty much a manufacturing system only,” said Mike Behnke, Project Manager at Miller-St. Nazianz. “IFS gives us the opportunity to extend the benefits of an automated system to other areas of the business.”

In particular, the company’s sales department was looking for an easier way to maintain and track detailed information about budgets and expenses, much of which was being stored offline.

Also, management wanted more real-time visibility into the company’s production and financial data to improve decision making, efficiency, and customer service, and an advanced platform that would support the company’s strategic plans.

The solution

Miller-St. Nazianz chose to replace its existing system with a fully integrated business solution from IFS. The company began the implementation in February 2002 and went live with the IFS solution the following September, with no disruption to business operations.

Benefits

By having real-time information available when and where it is needed, Miller St.-Nazianz has been able to enhance efficiency in its manufacturing plant, improve customer service, and reduce order-to-delivery time.

“We now know how many parts we have on hand before we release an order,” Behnke said. “We no longer have to call the customer back to say we can’t do something that we promised them earlier.”

IFS Applications has also improved efficiency on the financial side of the business.

“We now have budgets by department, and those budgets are easier to maintain,” said Mike Malesevich, Vice President and General Manager of Miller-St. Nazianz.

The company’s accountants have set up posting controls to post transactions to specific accounts based on product groups, commodity codes, and account groups. Before, the postings were made to general accounts, and journal entries were required to get the revenues and expenses where they belonged.

“With IFS, the number of journal entries we make is a fraction of what it was before,” said T. J. Hendrikse, cost accountant and network administrator at Miller-St. Nazianz. “That in itself is a huge benefit.”

Loading data into the system has been much easier since the switchover to IFS. The company now uses an inexpensive macro program to load data from spreadsheets directly into the system.

“It’s really easy to move data into the system now,” Malesevich said. “What was taking hundreds of hours of clerical time—you just don’t have it anymore.”
Malesevich added that the ability to generate management reports quickly and easily is a major benefit.

“Using Crystal Reports with IFS, you can write just about any report you want,” Malesevich said. “We’re on our fourth system, and this is the first report writer we can actually use.”

In the future, Miller-St. Nazianz plans to use its currently installed IFS functionality to improve scheduling, reduce inventory, and track warranty claims. In keeping with IFS’ step-by-step approach to software implementation, the company is also exploring the possibility of adding web portals to give its sales representatives and dealers immediate access to information about production and orders, and adding bar-coding functionality for both inventory tracking and time reporting.

“We’re just beginning to tap the potential of our system,” Behnke said. “We will continually be finding new ways to do things to improve our business.”

Facts about Miller-St. Nazianz, Inc.

Founded in 1899, Miller-St. Nazianz, Inc., manufactures and supports more than 20 product lines of agricultural equipment for forage harvesting, livestock feeding, manure handling, and crop spraying. Companies and brand names include Badger Farm Systems, Miller Application Technologies, Miller Pro, Victor (a product line sold and serviced exclusively by John Deere®dealers), and Miller Finance Corp.

Software

IFS Manufacturing™
IFS Distribution™
IFS Financials™
IFS Applications™ for Service Management
IFS Human Resources™

Hardware

Supermicro® server with dual 2.4 GHz Intel® Xeon™ processors, Microsoft® Windows® 2000 operating system, 3GB RAM, three 36 GB hot-swappable SCSI hard drives, two 18 GB hot-swappaple SCSI hard drives, three hot-swappable power supplies, Oracle® database, version 8.1.7.