The Company
Metwood, Inc. is a manufacturer of custom structural beams for the residential and commercial building industry. Sales in 1999 were $1.2 million. Their newly patented product enables the use of a smaller beam (at lower cost) to support a greater building load. The company sells its products directly to building contractors.

The Situation
Metwood determined that its ability to increase sales was hampered by the slow process to design a beam that fit the customer's specifications. Even with the use of a beam design program, the generation of a customer quotation was time consuming and required several trips to the customer's job site to obtain load information, deliver the quotation, and convert the accepted quote into a sales order. Once the sales order was delivered, office personnel spent additional time copying the sales order information into shop instructions to manufacture the beam.

The Response
VPMEP Project Manager James Tate recommended the development of an order entry computer program based on the existing beam design program. The program would be more flexible for the salesperson and store design information for later use in creating a sales order and printing the shop manufacturing instructions. Tate assisted Metwood in identifying the user requirements for the program. VPMEP third party provider True Sun Technologies wrote the programming instructions and installed the program. VPMEP and True Sun were able to deliver a finished software package to Metwood for testing in 4 weeks.

The Results
Metwood sales personnel are capable of inputting the customer load specifications, designing a beam, and generating a quotation at the customer site on the initial visit. The sales order and design information is downloaded at the plant to produce the shop instructions for beam fabrication. Metwood expects the use of this software to increase sales by up to $500,000 in the next year. The labor savings due to increased efficiency of sales and office personnel is projected at $40,000 in the first year.

Management's Comment
Shawn Callahan, General Manager of Metwood, is enthusiastic about the success of the software. "In developing this software, VPMEP and True Sun gave us the technical support to better service our customers." Callahan further added, "The increased sales will enable us to move to a new, larger production facility. We anticipate using VPMEP to help in the plant layout and setting up production lines. I would highly recommend VPMEP to other manufacturers to help with their problems," said Callahan.

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