Tippmann Pneumatics and Accellos One Collect for GP

Leading Paintball Manufacturer Targets Inventory Gaps with Accellos One Collect: Saves Big, Scores 99% Accuracy

Tippmann Pneumatics was looking at closure in the mid-1980s in response to public outrage over the attempted assassination of President Ronald Regan. The company manufactured collectible half-scale machine guns, and it stood to be regulated out of business. But spotting a trend, founder Dennis Tippmann, Sr. redirected the company towards an emerging new sport: paintball, where players barrage one another with paint-filled pellets launched from CO2 or compressed air guns called markers.

Paintball as a game is an adaptation of a utilitarian process well known to loggers. In the forests, trees selected for harvesting were “marked” using air-propelled paint pellets. Hence, in the paintball industry the term “marker” is used versus the potentially controversial “gun.” The sport has followers worldwide, with more than five million people playing on indoor and outdoor courses in the U.S. alone, informally and in organized leagues under established rules.

The Company

Located in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Tippmann Pneumatics became Tippmann Sports in 2004 when the Tippmann family sold the company’s paintball business to a private investment group.  IT Director Doug Spieth estimates the size of today’s paintball market at $350-400 million, and Tippmann Sports reigns as the industry leader. It manufactures and markets a broad selection of automatic and semi-automatic marker models, modification options, accessories such as barrels, grips and loaders, paint grenades and even a line of apparel and gear.

The company occupies a 30,000 square foot manufacturing space that is supported by a 40,000 square foot warehouse manned by four order pickers, a supervisor, a receiving clerk and an inventory manager. Initially the company distributed its products through the dealer channel but today it deals directly with a network of 3,000 individual stores as well as with all of the major mass merchandisers – WalMart, K-Mart, Sports Authority and others.

The Situation

The company’s warehouse operations are basic, utilizing lift trucks to collect and deliver raw materials to the manufacturing floor, skids of finished products from manufacturing to storage, and customer orders to the staging area for shipment. Since 1999, the company has used Microsoft Dynamics GP (initially Great Plains Software) as its enterprise resource planning solution, executing the flow of components and finished goods manually through the system’s inventory management module.

Warehouse operations were not well-organized, Spieth said, with raw materials and product normally placed on a space-available basis.  When draw-down was required either for manufacturing (raw materials, components) or for order shipment (finished product), warehouse personnel – most of them long-term employees with good knowledge of the warehouse geography – would visually search for the materials, pick the required product and deliver it.

When finished goods were returned to the warehouse, raw materials were relieved from the warehouse and finished products were returned. The inventory was recorded on paper — number of markers, the part numbers they represented – and this information was keyed into the system to adjust the inventory records.

In early 2007, the company implemented Accellos One Collect, allowing the company to turn on Microsoft Dynamics’ bin allocation capability, automate the end-to-end inventory management process and eliminate virtually all of the paper-based receiving, inventory management and picking processes.

Two Stocking Points

Tippmann normally manufactures from 1,500 to 2,000 markers per day, each of which has about 150 raw components that range from bolts and screws to injection-molded plastic parts. Only about five percent of the components are manufactured internally. On arrival at the dock the hundreds of parts typically were staged, counted and compared with the packing slip. The invoice would go to accounts payable and the shipment would be keyed in to the ERP software.
 
Microsoft Dynamics incorporates a comprehensive inventory management module, but it is entirely reliant on paper- and screen-based processes for receiving, inventory tracking and transfer and picking/shipping. As a result, inventory was tracked only to the warehouse level because the volume of transactions made manual bin-level control unrealistic.

 “There was no easy way for us to do those transactions within the Dynamics GP product prior to the implementation of Accellos One Collect,” Spieth says.

Tippmann also maintains a “work in progress” inventory on the manufacturing floor, from which it draws down the components used in making the products. Stocking levels were established and at the end of the factory day a report went to the production scheduler indicating what had been built and what items needed replenishment. Finished product went to warehouse inventory where it was placed in stock and recorded in the Dynamics software. Spieth estimates that the overall process entailed at least 1,000 transactions per day.

“At the pallet level, it was not a bad solution,” he says,”but at the bin level it was hard to find things and when loose items were needed it was even worse.” Moreover,  he said, the company’s twice-yearly inventory audits consistently revealed significant shrinkage as crews of up to 20 people normally spent three full days counting product. “At $13.00 per hour, this was an expensive process.”

Little could be done to correct the situation under the existing technology, and Spieth began looking for answers.

Solution

Spieth launched a search for a solution to automate the end-to-end material management processes – from raw materials receipt, manufacturing supplies transfer, storage and retrieval of finished goods, through shipment of products to retailers — with three basic criteria:

1. Compatibility with Microsoft Dynamics GP: the ability to perform all of the transactions within the inventory and manufacturing modules
2. Warehouse inventory control using barcode scanners
3. License plating: the ability to group an entire skid under a single barcode identifier.

Spieth narrowed his findings to three possibilities, one of them the Accellos One Collect solution which he encountered at the Microsoft Convergence conference.

Accellos One Collect blends the sophistication of a warehouse management system with the simplicity of an automated data collection solution.  It connects, collects and controls every aspect of Microsoft Dynamics GP receiving, order fulfillment and inventory control functions, gathering data at its origin and entering it in real time into the ERP system. Information is collected using RF handheld computers and is processed following the Microsoft Dynamics GP business rules.

“Ease of installation was a primary consideration,” he says, “and Accellos One Collect was already integrated with the Dynamics GP database.  There was no complex interface where you had to manage inventory in one system and have it interface back to Dynamics GP, with potential discrepancies between the two.

“The only other finalist had its own database and would have required this additional step. The direct integration was the winning factor. The fact that it was built directly on top of the Dynamics GP database and used its inventory numbers was the biggest selling point to us. Implementation of the solutions was totally painless and unbelievably fast.”

Once the company committed to purchasing Accellos One Collect, an installer spent two days on-site learning about Tippmann’s processes and requirements after which he returned to his own offices to configure the solution. Returning to the Fort Wayne location, he spent three days installing the solution and training employees in its use. The solution went live January 1, 2007.

Workflow

The Accellos One Collect solution utilizes Psion-Teklogix Workabout Pro hand computers to communicate with Microsoft Dynamics over an RF network. Functionality begins with the receipt of raw materials and components. Data is gathered, exchanged and transmitted to and from the ERP software each time either raw material or finished goods are touched.

When materials arrive, warehouse personnel scan the purchase order numbers printed and bar-coded on the packing slips. The scan reveals what is in the shipment and verifies the count. Microsoft Dynamics records the material as “on hand.”  Bin names within Microsoft Dynamics essentially provide a map of the warehouse, so when shipments are moved to storage, the material handler can use the scanning device to tell the software exactly where they have been placed, using a real bin name.

Replenishment of the “work in progress” inventory maintained by manufacturing, formerly a complicated visual process, is now automated. When manufacturing bins reach a defined stock level, supervisors notify Microsoft Dynamics and the software instructs Accellos One Collect to pick and transfer the needed material. Where formerly warehouse personnel would scour the warehouse to locate the requested parts, they now move from bin to bin as directed by their handheld computers. As they pick, inventory count is automatically relieved.

Finished goods normally are moved from manufacturing to the warehouse in skids of 100 units, completely packaged with all printed customer support material included. As the skids are transferred, they are assigned a location under a single identifier for all units on the skid, raw material inventory is duly relieved and warehouse finished goods inventory is updated with the new, shippable product.

As sales orders arrive, they are pushed from Microsoft Dynamics to the warehouse floor.  Accellos One Collect checks the serial numbers on the pick lines and directs the pickers to specific bin locations, bin to bin, until the orders are filled. The product is staged at the shipping dock, the inventory reduction is recorded in Microsoft Dynamics, shipments are recorded against the sales orders, invoices are prepared, and the product is out the door. 

“Accellos One Collect has enabled us to establish a ‘cradle-to-grave’ process,” Spieth says. “It is easier, more efficient and has vastly improved our operations.”

Productivity and ROI

Tippmann actually increased productivity with fewer personnel after implementing Accellos One Collect.  In 2005, for example, the company shipped an average of 180 orders representing a total of 650 lines picked per day. This number peaked in 2006 at 217 orders and 806 lines per day. Despite a modest industry fall-off commencing in 2007, the numbers for the year again showed and average of 217 orders, but an increase to 912 lines representing an expanded number of SKUs and more different SKUs per order. The efficiency increase relates directly to the newly automated procedures, Spieth says.

In estimating return on the purchase of Accellos One Collect, Spieth and management look at a single key factor: the value of physical inventory shrink. Pre-2007, the company conducted two inventories per year, with 20 people spending three days and usually uncovering inventory shrinkage of between $100,000 and $150,000, most of it traceable to bad or missed transactions.

Under Accellos One Collect, Tippmann has taken inventory only once a year and has seen shrinkage drop to under $10,000. In 2009, the company may eliminate inventory counts altogether, instead relying on the software’s cycle counting capabilities.

Result

“We are satisfied that we paid for our Accellos One Collect solution in one year or less,” Spieth says. “We needed faster, more accurate inventory accounting and control, the ability to move multiple units as a single transaction, and more efficient support for our manufacturing operations.

“Accellos One Collect allowed us to get rid of paper forms and screen-based processes and take full advantage of the capabilities of our Microsoft Dynamics GP software. We’re now 99 percent accurate, we can identify and solve problems quickly, and we can conduct transactions between manufacturing and the warehouse in real time.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 11th, 2009 at 10:51 am and is filed under Customers, Data Collection, Warehouse. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.