Officially, the product of Mid-States Concrete Products is prestressed concrete construction materials. In reality, Mid-States' success made it a major producer of two unintended — but equally concrete — products: paperwork and overtime. Increases in demand for the South Beloit, Ill., company's Flexicore slabs, beams and precast elements brought production increases that pleased company management, yet significantly overtaxed the staff charged with scheduling production and installation.

While Mid-States' products were designed on advanced CAD systems, each day's production was planned on paper, in triplicate. “We spent hours doing production scheduling … people were constantly taking paperwork home. It was crazy,” recalls C. Hagen Harker, vice president and plant manager. “Our goal was to have some kind of software that could eliminate the paperwork. We knew doing things on paper wasn't efficient, from the standpoint of time and accuracy.”

For a long time, Mid-States found that the high cost of workable software kept its computer screens dark and pencils sharp. “We looked at programs created for other Flexicore companies,” Harker says. “They were very expensive, and they were designed by software companies. We wanted a program created by someone who understands our industry.”

The ELi Plan remedy

The solution came soon after Mid-States chose to add an Elematic 900 E extruder. As part of the purchase, the Mid-States production staff became aware of PCE Elematic's ELi Plan software, and discussions began with the program's U.S. support staff. As a result, Mid-States chose to commission its own version of ELi Plan, designed specifically for Flexicore production.

Installed in November of 2000, the software made a positive difference within weeks of its arrival. “Now we can tell at a glance how everything is tied together … there's no more hunting for paperwork,” says Merla Bussan, who manages the company's production and installation scheduling.

“It's like night and day,” affirms production scheduler Helen Richards. “It took all day to pass the paper around, and now I can do the same scheduling in a matter of seconds.” She adds that moving from paper to the new software was a lot less painful than Mid-States had originally imagined.

“It really wasn't that hard to learn,” says Richards, who had computer experience in a previous position. “Once you realize that it's basically a database system, it's pretty easy to understand.” She noted that, given the support of the PCE Elematic software staff person, initial implementation of ELi Plan was also painless for Mid-States, which has no on-site computer system administrator.

From the perspective of Cynthia Linnabary, Mid-States' director of project design, the new software presents challenges as well as opportunities. The designers on her staff are now in charge of entering data that begins the production scheduling process. “In a way, it's a bit more work for us,” she says, “but there is a compensation. ELi Plan gives us an easy way to stay on track with projects after they go into production. Now we can just call the information up, where once we had to call people and dig through papers to answer a customer question. We don't mind the extra steps because we know there is a big benefit in it for the company as a whole.”

Improvement in output

The biggest ELi Plan benefit of all is increased efficiency in production, Mid-States management finds. The company was able to boost its output by one-third after implementation, with three shifts of production from the same staff that once could finish only two. “It's a bit too soon to make a definitive statement about improvements,” says Harker, “but I think it's fair to say that we will be able to take two or three days off our average production time.”

Not surprisingly, Mid-States has plans to expand ELi Plan's capability. The system is currently being loaded with complete sales and contact information, in anticipation of the day when the software coordinates the company's sales functioning. Harker also intends to utilize a project estimating package now in development by PCE Elematic. “We will always need the human brain to make the decision on utilization,” Harker concludes, “but there is so much improvement we can make by easing the flow of information. As a manager, I think having this data at your fingertips is invaluable. If you have information, you have the vision to grow.”

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