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Microsoft Industry Solutions Publishes Case Study on Edifice Supply Chain Management Solutions.
Criterion Sciences
A sophisticated, Microsoft© BackOffice©-based Vendor Managed Inventory application
from Edifice is helping this leading chemical maker lower supply-chain costs and improve service simultaneously.
Thanks to Edifice, Criterion raised manufacturing capacity by 20%, reduced inventory by 10%, and cut plant overtime by
30% even as it maintained an impressive 99% order fill rate.
Company Profile
Criterion Sciences supplies laboratory chemicals and diagnostic reagents to leading manufacturers and distributors
in medicine, science, and industry all over the world.
Situation
Like most manufacturers, Criterion lacked access to the kind of real-time customer demand and distributor
inventory data it needed to make efficient production plans. As a result, the company often carried excess
inventory and experienced dramatic swings in its manufacturing cycle.
Business Solution
Criterion began working with Edifice, a Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) outsourcing service provider. Powered by
Microsoft BackOffice technologies, Edifice’s VMI system receives daily inventory transactions from Criterion
distributors via EDI. Based on that data and demand history information, Edifice creates an order plan that
Criterion then reviews, edits, and approves through a Web-based client application. In addition to helping
Criterion match production to demand more precisely, the Edifice system also streamlines the exchange of purchase
orders, advance shipping notices, and other documents.
Benefits
Thanks to the Edifice VMI system, Criterion has gained 20% in manufacturing capacity, reduced inventory by
10%, and cut plant overtime by 30%. Moreover, the company is providing better service than ever before,
maintaining a 99% order fill rate. Meanwhile, receivable discrepancies are down from 2% of line items to
0.2%. The bottom line is lower costs, higher customer satisfaction, and greater return on managed capital.
In their ongoing struggle against waste and inefficiency, more and more manufacturers are turning to a
powerful new weapon: Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI). Also known as "continuous replenishment," VMI
enables manufacturers to base their production and shipment plans on actual customer demand, as reflected
in real-time inventory data from their distributors.
To see just what kind of results VMI can deliver, one need look no further than Criterion Sciences, a
leading maker of laboratory chemicals and diagnostic reagents. Working with a VMI service provider named
Edifice Information Management Systems, Criterion has reduced inventory, lowered overtime, and improved
service all at once. Based on Microsoft BackOffice technologies, Edifice’s VMI application is helping
Criterion get the right product in the right quantity to the right place at the right time.
Before it discovered Edifice, Criterion, like most manufacturers, had trouble keeping production in sync
with orders. "We were having quite big swings in orders from our distributors, which in turn caused us to
either work overtime or, in times of drought, to have people basically waiting for something to do,"
recalls Jeff Dangelmajer, Criterion’s Director of Manufacturing. "We were just building too much inventory
and it was creating tremendous problems in our manufacturing cycle." When Criterion learned about Edifice,
it quickly saw that VMI could not only help it stabilize production and lower inventory, but give it a
competitive advantage with Allegiance Healthcare Corporation, its biggest distributor, as well.
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