Plexus Online - iPurity Case StudyStarting Up Lean: The Benefits of On-Demand ERP Beyond ManufacturingAbout iPurityiPurity installs clean pipe in factories that make computer chips and medicine. The company brings proven technology from the manufacturing sector to the construction jobsite in order to attract and enable the most productive workers and achieve the shortest installation time in the industryBackgroundKurt Gilson and Ron Nussle, Jr. had an interesting challenge. Gilson was the former CEO of a $600M Silicon Valley high-tech construction company (the world's largest in the $3B/year "clean process" construction industry) and a 20+ year veteran of the silicon-valley construction industry. Nussle was a senior manufacturing executive - twenty plus years of supply chain and operations experience, including being the Chief Supply Chain / Operations executive for Lam Research ($1.5b+ semiconductor equipment manufacturer), and before that for Cessna Aircraft and Honeywell. The other members of the management team also averaged 25 years each in significant management positions. But now they were considering a new venture in the "clean process piping" market and wanted to forge a business that installs high-purity process equipment for semiconductor and Bio/Pharmaceutical industries - a highly specialized construction niche.The Start Up SolutionAfter careful consideration, Gilson decided it made more sense to start a new business rather than investing years reengineering a 30 year old company. It would be quicker and easier to create an enterprise from scratch. Starting with nothing and only building what was value-added in the customer's and shareholder's eyes. In other words using "Lean Thinking" and "Six-Sigma" tools before the company was even formed, rather than conducing "Kaizen" events on existing broken processes. How would they build a company from the ground up - not retrofit an existing company into a new, forward thinking high-tech construction company? They knew what many existing companies in their industry had evolved their business processes to look like the famous "spaghetti diagram":
Now, that they decided what they wanted to do, it was time to start the due diligence to discover with whom they wanted to partner to accomplish building this new company. Nussle compared the situation to General Motors deciding to start anew with Saturn. Sometimes, to avoid the time-consuming hassle of legacy issues - in the case of GM it was the UAW, existing supplier contracts and a negative mindset toward the company - it's necessary to go back to the drawing board and build it from scratch. "I knew what we wanted," said Gilson, "I just didn't know what platform to build a totally new, efficient company that could succeed in this demanding high-tech construction industry." Integration is the GoalThey were searching for a company that had an integrated system that possessed all the tools needed to make the enterprise thrive. Nussle wanted a software solution, but didn't want to bother with the infrastructure that many of the older legacy systems required. And finally, they needed something easy to configure so he didn't have to spend a fortune. Nussle had a lot of experience with SAP, Gilson had used Oracle. But neither thought their start-up was a fit with these behemoths. "We knew we never would have been as successful with Oracle or SAP" said Nussle. "We would never be able to get their attention." Instead, they looked for a company that focused on SMEs - small to medium enterprises. Gilson started the search like many of us do - he typed "ERP Hosted Solution" into a search engine and started reviewing the first 100 hits. He kept going until he hit the Plexus Systems Website. When he saw one particular screen it was an Aha! moment.
Manufacturing PlatformIt seemed to possess all of the discrete modules needed to create and manage a state-of-the-art manufacturing company. Now the question was whether a manufacturing platform could be configured to meet the needs of a construction company, more specifically, in the highly regulated Bio-Pharmaceutical construction industry. For one example, Nussle explained that it was typical for a large clean-process-piping construction project to have literally 1,000 or more 3-ring binders filled with all of the traceability and conformance documentation required in an FDA-approved drug manufacturing facility. They proceeded with a "shoot-off" of Plexus and Salesforce.com. Three to four months of intensive evaluation later, they had the answer. "Plexus Online came across as heads and shoulders ahead of Salesforce.com," said Nussle. iPurity found the solution provider that would help design a company from the ground up.A Unique Approach"As far as we know, this is a unique approach that has not been successfully attempted till now: iPurity is one of the first companies in the world to apply established lean-sigma manufacturing methods to the project-construction industry.", says Nussle, "Tract homes which are "cut-and-paste" configurations have done so, but large-scale commercial projects are each unique and no two facilities are ever the same." "As far as I'm concerned, Plexus' focus on SMEs makes all the difference," said Nussle. "Now, SAP and Oracle and other companies like that know that SMEs are the future, the frontier for new growth. That's something that Plexus Systems knew from the start." Nussle continued, "At iPurity we changed everything; job descriptions, methods, processes. With existing companies you can only tweak and retrofit. Plexus helped us start fresh, and we are thriving." Since iPurity launched in 2007 as a provider of clean rooms and clean room equipment for the high-tech manufacturing industry, they can boast of tremendous, quantifiable results: iPurity Lean-Sigma ConstructionCompetitive Advantages over Traditional Construction
"I've become an advocate for Plexus Systems, a cheerleader," said Nussle. "We wouldn't be as successful without their help. I tell people all the time, "These guys can do it for SME's. The others hope to. Plexus can and has for iPurity." |
