Fluid logic manufacturer consolidates systems on Microsoft Dynamics
1 min read
US fluidic logic devices manufacturer Bowles Fluidics says it has selected Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 over 14 contenders for its functionality, user interface and wireless capabilities.
Jeffrey Wilson, Bowles IT director, says the company, which makes automotive screen washer nozzles, pulsating shower heads and spa jets, is using the system to integrate its production systems, gain scalability and improve EDI performance.
He explains that it had been facing EDI challenges and was having difficulty ensuring correct barcode labelling and adequate product tracking – not helped by an infrastructure involving 10 different systems.
“If we wanted to track a lot number to a shipment, we’d have to go through three or four different systems and manually assemble the data. We wanted to bring our processes back to a best-practices standard,” he says.
For Bowles Fluidics, that led to evaluating 14 ERP systems, before shortlisting five: Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009, Oracle’s JD Edwards, QAD, Glovia and enterpriseIQ.
“Microsoft Dynamics functionality was greater than that of the others,” says Wilson, “and its interface was amazingly useful as well. It went beyond being intuitive; when you look at the screen it’s obvious what process steps our users should follow.”
With the help of Microsoft gold certified partner mcaConnect LLC, Wilson says the company will now integrate Dynamics AX with SharePoint Server, Office Project Server and its existing Microsoft infrastructure, including SQL Server, Exchange Server with Active Directory, and Office productivity tools. It also intends to augment the new solution with software to interface data with EDI requirements.
