DKM helps Mee Industries Implement NetSuite in a MAC ERP Environment
Watch the Customer Success Story with Mee Industries' CFO Darcy Sloan
Schedule Your Free Consultation
JD: I'm Jeff Dixon with DKM an authorized NetSuite partner. Today we're please to have Darcy Sloan, The President of Mee Industries with us. Mee based in Irwindale, California is a leading maker of high pressure fog systems. DKM has assisted me in implementing the NetSuite system, a financial program for Mac. Darcy, thanks for being with us, Can you tell us a little bit about Mee Industries and some of your key customers?
DS: Yes, Mee Industries is an engineering and manufacturing company. We've been in business for about forty three years. We have seventy-five employees and we manufacture high pressure fogging systems. Our biggest market is cooling for the power industry. We build high pressure fogging cooling systems for cooling gas turbines also used for building de-humidification and special effects.
JD: Great. How long have you been using NetSuite. The ERP for Mac systems?
DS: We started using NetSuite about five years ago first of all for accounting with the goal to integrate the ERP and the CRM. I think the ERP we started maybe three years ago and we're still building it up and it's working quite well for us.
JD: And you recently started using the CRM for Mac capability. One of the unique functions in the Mac CRM capability is project management. Can you tell us why project management is such a critical area for Mee?
DS: Project management is important because most of our projects are big complex with lost of parts and lost of scheduling and things to do so with using the ERP we're able to schedule the engineering and the drafting time and all of our production units integrate things so they get done more quickly with fewer things falling in the cracks.
JD: Great, I see that you actually have a screen up in the project management area. Would you mind just taking us through showing us how you use NetSuite in project management?
DS: Yes this screen is showing our production schedule. All of the projects that have been released for production show up here. These columns are showing each production unit and an estimate of how many hours to complete each portion. So this is kind of the home screen for me and my VP of operations when we sit down for meetings. We're able to figure out if we have the manpower needs or if we need to hire new people, or schedule overtime or what area can turn into bottlenecks. But we have similar screens set up for every single department in the company and we're an ISO quality management certified management company. In the past we had this one system for quality management that kind of ran to the side and then we had our normal business management system where we did everything. Over the past year we've made a big effort to integrate the two systems so they are one and everything that we needed to do for our quality system is now a part of our normal operations. And using NetSuite has enabled us to do that. We have reports and metrics for each of our departments. And they're all on NetSuite. Last I counted we have about 110 reports and metrics. Seven tabs, one for each department. And each of our managers is able to go in an keep track of the work in his or her department.
JD: Great. I know for the implementation of this you set up a team to do this internally with yourself as the team leader and engineering and some other folks involved. Can you tell me how DKM assisted you here with this project.
DS:We wouldn't have been able to get off the ground without DKM. DKM came in a helped set up the skeleton for the system and trained our IT people on how to get things going and from there we were were able to set up each one of those reports and metrics that we're using.
JD: Great. I'm noticing that you're using a Macintosh here today and NetSuite of course taking advantage of the graphics of the Macintosh, but you folks at Mee use a combination so the that screen that we're seeing here can either be deployed on the Macintosh or on the traditional IBM with Windows running. Is that correct?
DS: Yes we have both. We have a lot of people that are Mac fans and some that prefer the IBM type system.
JD: Great. So what's next for Mee Industries as it relates to NetSuite, this ERP for Mac system.
DS: We're ninety nine percent of the way to having the management system in place and we're using it now in management meetings. The next thing we want to do is fully integrate the CRM side of it to lead management from marketing to sales. Then we want to begin doing sales proposals using NetSuite and then using real time pricing from inventory which is now on a barcode system. So the costing side of things is very accurate and we're doing that using NetSuite's function. So integrating the marketing and the proposal side of things. Then we're also just weeks away from launching our online parts store through NetSuite. We sell spare parts. A list of probably six hundred different parts to our customers and they'll be able to log in to their accounts and order online instead of picking up the phone to call or sending an e-mail be able to see what parts are available. So that's what we have planned for the future.
JD: That sounds very exciting. Well that concludes our interview. Darcy, thank you very much for joining us today.
Schedule Your Free Consultation
JD: I'm Jeff Dixon with DKM an authorized NetSuite partner. Today we're please to have Darcy Sloan, The President of Mee Industries with us. Mee based in Irwindale, California is a leading maker of high pressure fog systems. DKM has assisted me in implementing the NetSuite system, a financial program for Mac. Darcy, thanks for being with us, Can you tell us a little bit about Mee Industries and some of your key customers?
DS: Yes, Mee Industries is an engineering and manufacturing company. We've been in business for about forty three years. We have seventy-five employees and we manufacture high pressure fogging systems. Our biggest market is cooling for the power industry. We build high pressure fogging cooling systems for cooling gas turbines also used for building de-humidification and special effects.
JD: Great. How long have you been using NetSuite. The ERP for Mac systems?
DS: We started using NetSuite about five years ago first of all for accounting with the goal to integrate the ERP and the CRM. I think the ERP we started maybe three years ago and we're still building it up and it's working quite well for us.
JD: And you recently started using the CRM for Mac capability. One of the unique functions in the Mac CRM capability is project management. Can you tell us why project management is such a critical area for Mee?
DS: Project management is important because most of our projects are big complex with lost of parts and lost of scheduling and things to do so with using the ERP we're able to schedule the engineering and the drafting time and all of our production units integrate things so they get done more quickly with fewer things falling in the cracks.
JD: Great, I see that you actually have a screen up in the project management area. Would you mind just taking us through showing us how you use NetSuite in project management?
DS: Yes this screen is showing our production schedule. All of the projects that have been released for production show up here. These columns are showing each production unit and an estimate of how many hours to complete each portion. So this is kind of the home screen for me and my VP of operations when we sit down for meetings. We're able to figure out if we have the manpower needs or if we need to hire new people, or schedule overtime or what area can turn into bottlenecks. But we have similar screens set up for every single department in the company and we're an ISO quality management certified management company. In the past we had this one system for quality management that kind of ran to the side and then we had our normal business management system where we did everything. Over the past year we've made a big effort to integrate the two systems so they are one and everything that we needed to do for our quality system is now a part of our normal operations. And using NetSuite has enabled us to do that. We have reports and metrics for each of our departments. And they're all on NetSuite. Last I counted we have about 110 reports and metrics. Seven tabs, one for each department. And each of our managers is able to go in an keep track of the work in his or her department.
JD: Great. I know for the implementation of this you set up a team to do this internally with yourself as the team leader and engineering and some other folks involved. Can you tell me how DKM assisted you here with this project.
DS:We wouldn't have been able to get off the ground without DKM. DKM came in a helped set up the skeleton for the system and trained our IT people on how to get things going and from there we were were able to set up each one of those reports and metrics that we're using.
JD: Great. I'm noticing that you're using a Macintosh here today and NetSuite of course taking advantage of the graphics of the Macintosh, but you folks at Mee use a combination so the that screen that we're seeing here can either be deployed on the Macintosh or on the traditional IBM with Windows running. Is that correct?
DS: Yes we have both. We have a lot of people that are Mac fans and some that prefer the IBM type system.
JD: Great. So what's next for Mee Industries as it relates to NetSuite, this ERP for Mac system.
DS: We're ninety nine percent of the way to having the management system in place and we're using it now in management meetings. The next thing we want to do is fully integrate the CRM side of it to lead management from marketing to sales. Then we want to begin doing sales proposals using NetSuite and then using real time pricing from inventory which is now on a barcode system. So the costing side of things is very accurate and we're doing that using NetSuite's function. So integrating the marketing and the proposal side of things. Then we're also just weeks away from launching our online parts store through NetSuite. We sell spare parts. A list of probably six hundred different parts to our customers and they'll be able to log in to their accounts and order online instead of picking up the phone to call or sending an e-mail be able to see what parts are available. So that's what we have planned for the future.
JD: That sounds very exciting. Well that concludes our interview. Darcy, thank you very much for joining us today.