Motrec Is Ready to Grow With Genius ERP

Motrec is a company on a mission.

Their electric-powered industrial vehicles are used in factories and industrial sites around the world — even Barack Obama has been photographed riding on one — and that’s the way they like it. With a recent move into a 70,000 square foot state-of-the-art manufacturing facility, Motrec has ambitious plans to build on their success and grow their business.

Founded in 1988 in a small garage, word soon got out about Motrec’s sturdy, powerful and well-designed vehicles. Over the years Motrec has built their business from a 2-person operation to one that now employs 100 people and ships their vehicles across the globe. Their undying commitment to quality and creating reliable, rugged, and agile vehicles has made them an industry-leader with their innovatively-designed vehicles highly sought after.

Not satisfied with resting on their laurels, Motrec has ambitious plans to continue to grow their business and move into new markets.

Needed: An ERP System Designed for Custom Manufacturers

But with so much growth, hiccups are bound to happen. That’s where Genius ERP comes into the picture.

“A couple of years ago when I came in I realized that all of the operations were centralized in the office and that nobody was accountable on the floor,” says Alain Turgeon, Director, R&D, Continuous Improvement, and IT. He continues: “So I decided to make sure that people on the floor are accountable and are part of the solution.”

Turgeon knew that Motrec needed a system that could integrate and streamline their business processes, and one that could help them to be more efficient so that they could achieve their growth targets. Turgeon turned to Genius ERP to help the company attain greater visibility across their company, and help with their biggest pain points: inventory, purchasing, and their engineering department.

“Today, with what we did, everything is centralized in Genius, everyone is accountable for every task, so it’s quite easy with a customer to start the discussion and to convince them that Motrec can give a better service than anyone else,” says Turgeon.

Better Inventory Management with Genius ERP

One of the biggest issues that Motrec was having was with their inventory management. They lacked a real-time system for inventory, meaning they had to shut operations down for three days, at a cost of almost $400,000, to count their inventory — and they still came up with less than accurate counts.

“The biggest change that we have made, I think, is the inventory…We have implemented cycle count [in Genius ERP]. Since six months, we don’t take any inventory except the cycle count. Doing so the inventory is now 95% accurate instead of 72%,” says Turgeon.

Improved Purchasing with Genius ERP

Genius ERP has also been a godsend for helping Motrec get on top of their purchasing. “We used to do all of the purchasing outside of Genius, with different tools — an Excel spreadsheet or little notes everywhere. So instead of buying the right stuff at the right time, we were a little bit like a squirrel, so we would put a bit more on the shelf to make sure that we will have all the goods at the right time,” explains Turgeon.

This led to the company overspending on inventory, and still not always having the right goods on hand. “Since we have [put] everything into Genius, we are able to use the tools of Genius — to use the forecast — to make sure that we do purchasing the right way. We have the minimum, the maximum set up into Genius, and the economic quantity also, and it takes 25 minutes to do the purchasing every day, and that’s it,” says Turgeon, adding, “and also, we have lowered the inventory [on-hand] by 30%.”

Streamlined Engineering Processes with Genius ERP

One of the other major challenges Motrec was facing was with their engineering department. Motrec’s state-of-the-art vehicles require every single design to pass through the engineering department to ensure that everything is up-to-snuff. But, this much-needed step in their manufacturing process was taking up too much of the department’s time, as their engineers were spending an excessive amount of time duplicating information and re-entering data.

Genius ERP’s Product Engineering Module, which is designed specifically to meet the needs of custom-manufacturers like Motrec was a huge help to the department — helping them to speed up the review process.

“Today, every order, every vehicle must be seen by somebody in the engineering department to make sure that the configuration is good,” explains Turgeon.

With the help of Genius ERP, Motrec can get time back which allows their engineers to focus on other areas: “With the new bill of materials, with the new configurator [in Genius ERP], we will gain about 65% manpower in the engineering department, because the order will be configured automatically and will go into the planning department right away. Using the configurator, we will be able to have more time to develop new vehicles, and new options for the customer — and also maybe going into another market.”

Turgeon anticipates that Genius ERP will help them hit their growth targets: “Today we build around 120 to 130 vehicles per month, and we will go up to 300 in less than one year.”

Genius ERP: Foundation for Growth

Genius ERP has been fundamental to improving Motrec’s business and manufacturing processes, saving them time and money, and giving them a strong foundation on which they can build their future on. Anthony Isabella, Senior Business Analyst & Solutions Architect for Motrec states, “the ERP solution that we’re implementing is part of the solution for growth for now, and obviously for the next 5 to 10 years from now.” 

To read more about how Genius ERP helped Motrec, check out the full case study here.

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Impressed by what Genius ERP did for Motrec? See what Genius ERP can do for your business and book a demo today to see Genius ERP in action.