Data Systems International

Batesville Casket Company

Manufacturer Earns Honors For Efficiency As One Of Industry Week's Top 10 Manufacturing Plants in North America

For more than a century, Batesville Casket Company has produced and distributed high-quality caskets and memorial products with design features that help families honor their lost loved ones. That attention to detail and commitment to service has made Batesville Casket a leader in the North American funeral products industry.

Today, Batesville Casket manufactures 700,000 caskets annually and delivers to over 16,000 funeral homes daily. The company manufactures products in a variety of woods and metals with a choice of 150 color combinations, 27 shapes, and thousands of personalization details.

Challenge

The nature of Batesville Casket's business demands that every order be filled accurately and delivered quickly — most within 24 hours of order receipt. To do so, the company uses a complex distribution channel that moves product from 6 manufacturing and subassembly facilities in the U.S. and Mexico, to 5 regional distribution centers, to 100 local warehouse facilities, where they are staged for final delivery.

As Batesville Casket's product line grew, the company was challenged to effectively schedule production, manage inventory, and deliver product in a timely fashion. The company implemented Oracle's JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, but it knew it also needed automated data collection to help manage its inventory more effectively.

"At the time, we knew we had inventory control issues. Before we converted our enterprise application, we adjusted our inventory by over half a million dollars," said John Harmeyer, Controller of Batesville Operations, Batesville Casket

Further complicating inventory management was that the company's finished goods storage system, the Triax, was managed by 2 different controls — their legacy system and a local database that was uploaded only once each day.

Solution

Batesville Casket selected DSI's dcLINK^® automated data collection solution for integration with EnterpriseOne and the company's Triax system.

"dcLINK has played an important role in enabling us to improve our business processes," Harmeyer said. "We understood that entering transactions directly into the enterprise application was not going to be sufficient for our operations, manufacturing, and distribution areas. We needed a simpler way to gather and process the data. We're doing that through DSI's dcLINK."

Results

"dcLINK enabled us to make business processes more efficient and improve our inventory accuracy. dcLINK provides robust functionality that allows us to tackle any situation in our company and improve the process," said Rob Shane, BIS IT Analyst, Batesville Casket.

Improved Inventory Control. Now, with one scan of a bar code, dcLINK enables Batesville Casket to record inventory movements in real-time in the enterprise application. Every unit in the Triax is packaged, labeled, and stored using dcLINK. To fill an open order, the system automatically selects a unit, communicates with the conveyors to pull the unit, moves it into the conveyor control applications, and completes the shipment. As a result, the company knows the status of in-transit items, as well as counts for products on hold. Inventory accuracy has increased to over 99.9%.

dcLINK gives Batesville Casket access to accurate, real-time data when and where they need it. "We now have visibility into our physical inventory in the Triax, and we can monitor it every second of every day," said Harmeyer.

"We load out of the Triax to our docks throughout the day. We are able to keep the inventory maintained as well as continue to fill customer's requirements because it is live inventory. Now, with dcLINK, we misplace fewer than 10 units a year with the inventory control we have with dcLINK," said Harmeyer.

Automated Production Scheduling. To ensure they can quickly and accurately deliver every order, Batesville Casket automated production scheduling using dcLINK and EnterpriseOne. Every order automatically triggers replenishment, which in-turn, triggers production.

The company's manufacturing is a mix of make-to-stock and make-to-order. A schedule is created twice daily of the specific units to be manufactured by referencing on-hand inventory, open work orders, safety inventory, and targeted average mix. Work orders are created, printed, and displayed for each shift. When each unit is completed, the work order status is updated and becomes the unit's serial number. Throughout the process, dcLINK captures quality data that is used to further improve Batesville's work order management.

Improved Cycle Counting. Batesville Casket created a dcLINK script to automate cycle-counting. "It has decreased the amount of time it actually takes to do the count. With scanning of bar codes and the dcLINK integration into the enterprise application, we can quickly go through our area, do our counts, total them up, and validate. We use this to automate our cycle counting," Shane said.

Batesville Casket has successfully developed a reputation for speed, quality, and volume, while also achieving an efficient and lean operation. dcLINK and the data it collects contribute to the company's success in that area. Shane said, "When we look at a project in the manufacturing area, the first thing we ask ourselves is 'How can we automate this? And how can we automate it through dcLINK?'"

Award-winning Performance. Batesville Casket's efficiency and productivity earned the company recognition as one of Industry Week's Top 10 Manufacturing Plants in North America. "There are a lot of factors that go into winning that award, as well as completing the nomination application," said Harmeyer. To be considered for the award, facilities are evaluated against a wide variety of criteria, including on-time delivery and productivity improvements. "dcLINK undoubtedly played a role with regards to enabling us to improve our processes," he said.

When asked what he considers to be the greatest benefit of using dcLINK, Harmeyer said, "dcLINK reduces our labor cost and eliminates mistakes."