Customer of the Week: Great Western Valve, Inc.
www.gwvalve.com
Companies that move oceans of hazardous liquids through miles of industrial piping rely on sturdy, well-built valves to safely regulate the flow. When they need a faulty valve rebuilt or repaired, they turn to Great Western Valve.
Located in the heart of Houston's industrial center, Great Western Valve repairs and remanufactures control valves, pipeline valves, and relief valves used in the refining, petrochemical, pipeline, power, and pulp and paper Industries. Founded in 1990, Great Western Valve services all makes and models of automated control valves, pipeline block and bleed isolation valves, and triple off-set butterfly valves. They also repair and remanufacture instruments and positioners. Great Western Valve is an ISO 9001:2008 certified company, and is API compliant.
To manage their complex breakdown, analysis, and repair work processes, Great Western Valve also relies on a sturdy, well-built product—Global Shop ERP software.
"Before Global Shop, we were using many different programs to track business through the shop," says Michael Kouloumoundras, vice president of operations for Great Western Valve. "But as we grew, we knew we needed one integrated system to tie everything together. I set out to find an affordable ERP system that could grow with our company, and Global Shop clearly stood out from the crowd."
Custom Valve Roster
Since going live with the software in 2009, Global Shop has helped to streamline operations and cut costs throughout the company. But nowhere has it made a bigger difference than with the valve roster—a custom Global Application Builder (GAB) database program that makes it easy to track, collect, and manage the large amount of information required for each valve repair job.
"Every job we get comes with a lot of detailed customer specifications," notes Kouloumoundras. "And we generate a lot of information as we break down, inspect, repair, and test each valve. We needed an efficient way to bring all this data together, so Global Shop used the GAB feature to build our valve roster program. It has proved to be a huge time-saver and a great investment."
When a valve arrives at Great Western Valve for repair or rebuilding, it gets a general inspection and full review of all customer specs. Workers send the customer a best-case repair quote, and use Global Shop’s Document Link™ feature to automatically attach the spec sheet to the quote.
What follows is a complex series of steps that involve breaking down the valve, taking photos, testing the metal, evaluating and repairing component parts, quality control testing, reassembling, and shipping back to the customer. At each step of the way, new information gets added to the valve roster.
More than Just a Time/Money Saver
According to Kouloumoundras, this ability to access all valve data from one central location does more than just save time and money—it literally changes the way people work on the shop floor.
For example, the valve roster program takes most of the forms on the shop floor that people were filling out by hand and puts them in electronic format. Shop floor people can then go to their Graphical User Interface (GUI) station, launch the valve roster, and get all the information they need about a particular work order. Instead of creating separate reports, quality control people input most of their information into the valve roster. Even the people in sales and customer service can access the valve roster when working over the phone with customers.
"The best thing about the valve roster is that it can scale with us as we grow," says Kouloumoundras. "We started small, with three forms used on the shop floor, and built from there. Soon after implementing, we added the work scope and pictures to the mix. When the company added a new product line (safety relief valves), we expanded it again."
In addition to its regular inventory, Great Western Valve also keeps a large supply of used and surplus valves on hand. Through Global Shop, the company has also made great strides with inventory management. What used to be entirely manual is now almost fully electronic. When the company switches to bar-coded inventory, which they plan to do in the near future, it will become even more efficient.
Positive Impact on Every Area of the Business
As with the valve roster, Kouloumoundras appreciates Global Shop's ability to grow with the company.
"In a company of our size, you don't have all 40 people buying parts," he says. "So initially there wasn't a need for different levels of authorization for purchasing and other areas of the business. Due to steady growth over the past few years, we now have five people buying. With Global Shop, it's easy to set limits and assign authority without slowing down the purchasing process."
What Global Shop feature does Kouloumoundras like the best?
"That's hard to answer because it has impacted every facet of our business," he says. "That said, I really like the functionality of Global Shop. It's easy to use and understand, and our people picked it up fairly quickly. Global Shop has tied our entire business together, and we're now three times the company we were when we installed it."
