Success Story - Precision Strip

Precision Strip's New Interface Outstrips The Competition

   Precision Strip, Inc., a subsidiary of Reliance Steel and Aluminum Co., provides metal processing services for industries such as automotive, appliance, beverage can, and industrial products.
   Strong work ethic has rewarded Precision Strip with strong growth; it has expanded from three plants in 1995 to ten plants today. The company organizes its business and manufacturing processes using their home-grown enterprise resource system which they use in tandem with Syteline™ (for accounting) and Crystal Reports® (for invoice and
bill of lading printing).
   However, as the company grew and trained more employees, their 12-year-old Progress® characterbased system proved difficult to use. Precision Strip knew that switching from a character-based to a graphical user interface (GUI) would make training easier and reveal more of its features.
   Precision Strip turned to BravePoint to help with all facets of this large project—Progress technology selection, design input, project management, and
development. Because the IT staff at Precision Strip had always supported a character-based application, they also needed BravePoint’s tutoring and mentoring assistance with the new concept of object-oriented programming.
   Besides easing the learning curve and improving functionality, Precision Strip also gave BravePoint these objectives for the new software:
   • Improve customer service
   • Improve productivity
   • Reduce the amount of paper used in production (manual recording of details, filing,
      and retrieval of information)
   • Interface with Windows-based applications to make it easier to attach images and files
   Precision Strip had worked with BravePoint for previous projects, so after making the decision to create a client-server GUI application using Progress technology, their choice of vendor was easy. Not only did Precision Strip have confidence in BravePoint’s project management and programming skills, they already knew most of the BravePoint employees who would be assigned to the project.
   BravePoint worked with the Precision Strip team to create a client-server GUI application using Progress OpenEdge® 10.0B technology and the OpenEdge® WebClient. Precision Strip had the responsibility of translating their business processes
into software specifications, as well as programming portions of the client-side and server-side code.
   BravePoint supplied the Progress and WebClient expertise, provided project management services, and integrated with Precision Strip’s other applications. The two teams worked closely together to ensure the software was a business-driven process—not a technology project.
   Throughout the development process, BravePoint also provided mentoring and tutoring to the Precision Strip IT staff, who rotated between maintaining the legacy system and learning the new concepts of object-oriented programming. “During the learning process,” says Karen Kauffman, Precision Strip IT Supervisor, “BravePoint’s support
was very reassuring. They didn’t try to retain or hold any information back. That constant support was tremendously appreciated.”
   Precision Strip began using the GUI based system, named Genesis, at one plant in August 2005. By October 2006, all ten plants were running on Genesis. Its ease of use was quickly put to the test. Sue Borchers, Precision Strip IT Director, says, “Within six weeks, we purchased two new plants and brought them live simultaneously with Genesis. The production associates caught on extremely quickly. It couldn’t have happened that fast if we’d been on our legacy, character-based system.”
   BravePoint continues to work closely with Precision Strip, mentoring them as the IT staff picks up the new technology. And with BravePoint’s help, Precision Strip plans to upgrade to OpenEdge 10.01B this year. In fact, BravePoint is on-site so often that Borchers jokes that Precision Strip is considering having them wear the same green
uniforms as all the other employees. She notes that, “BravePoint was able to fit into our culture, establish working relationships and respect, and move forward very quickly.”
   Because Genesis was rolled out at the last plant in late 2006, Precision Strip hasn’t yet quantified any savings or return on investment from the new software. But Borchers says, “One of the smaller goals was to make this a paperless operation. In the past, we used a tremendous amount of paper to copy and file. Now nearly all of our plants are paperless. Our goal is to keep our operator not in front of the computer, but in front of the line running coils. We’ve had success in doing that.”