Global Manufacturer Anchors Future-Proofing Modernisation Strategy with Integrated, Data-Rich, Multi-Site Cloud ERP
The humble machine valve’s relative simplicity belies a critical function in regulating bulk material flow. An inadequate valve can result in costly inefficiencies, product degradation, and accelerated equipment wear for manufacturers in the food, dairy, plastics, petrochemical, pharmaceutical, and mineral industries.
DMN-WESTINGHOUSE, one of the world’s leading rotary and diverter valve suppliers, is recognised for providing high-quality products configured to meet any application across various industries. With a specific focus on high-growth and emerging markets, the company’s former infrastructure limited ambition and adaptability. DMN-WESTINGHOUSE needed a unified, global business platform and a single source of truth.
Headquartered in the Netherlands, DMN-WESTINGHOUSE serves customers via a network of more than 70 distribution partners, and sales and production facilities in Germany, the U.S., India, the UK, and France. The company has been an Epicor customer since 2010, but each site had its own ERP system and discrete databases, which made managing the business challenging.
We needed a dependable, scalable global solution. Epicor Kinetic deployed in the cloud, offered the highest flexibility, scalability, reliability, security, and innovation, with the least dependency on individual skills and scarce resources. Now, we are always on the latest version, enabling DMN-WESTINGHOUSE to keep pace with the speed of Epicor innovation.
DMN-WESTINGHOUSE needed to adapt to better address rapidly changing global market dynamics, supply chain complexity, and evolving compliance standards. Nick Heilen, Operations Manager at DMN-WESTINGHOUSE, highlighted, “Our focus has been to reform and integrate the company to make it future-proof. We carried out a major modernisation effort, where Epicor has been a key component.”
The first step was identifying the right partner to facilitate the vision. Epicor partner Scherpthe helped define a rollout plan to consolidate the breadth of the DMN-WESTINGHOUSE businesses into a unified Epicor Kinetic environment. Within six months, the company migrated the Netherlands, Germany, India, and the U.S. to Epicor Kinetic, which DMN-WESTINGHOUSE deployed in the cloud.
“We used to maintain a server park, but a power outage meant that our colleagues in the U.S. could not operate,” Heilen revealed. “We needed a dependable, scalable global solution. Epicor Kinetic deployed in the cloud offered the highest flexibility, scalability, reliability, security, and innovation with the least dependency on individual skills and scarce resources.” He added, “Now, we are always on the latest version, enabling DMN-WESTINGHOUSE to keep pace with the speed of Epicor innovation."
“Scherpthe has been enthusiastic, insightful, and willing to help. They pushed us toward a cloud solution, which accelerated our goal of future-proofing the business, and I’m grateful for that,” Heilen continued.
In addition to streamlining the infrastructure, Epicor is also driving human efficiency. “With the previous ERP setup, we were doing a lot of administration and operational work that didn't add value,” shared Paul Silva da Cruz, CFO at DMN-WESTINGHOUSE. “We expect to significantly reduce overhead with the multi-company deployment and shift employees to higher-value-added work.”
Heilen elaborated, “Previously, there was a lot of manual re-keying of purchase orders, sales orders, and AP and AR processes. For instance, our new sales office in India used Excel to calculate sales orders. Not only does that take a lot of time, but it also creates opportunities to introduce errors.”
As part of the modernisation effort, DMN-WESTINGHOUSE has committed to utilising technology as it was intended to be consumed. “We used to do a lot of customisations, which can result in radically different systems,” Heilen explained. “We want to standardise on Epicor as it was designed so that we are all working with the same fields, and definitions.”
For example, the company is setting up a global parts database and using Epicor Automation Studio to facilitate synchronisation across the business. The team is also looking to move from a proprietary CPQ tool to an off-the-shelf cloud-based solution.
Our global cloud deployment has slashed internal IT and application support costs by 20% and reduced support tickets and issues registered considerably.
Today, 220 DMN-WESTINGHOUSE users access Epicor Kinetic to manage manufacturing operations, pre-production materials planning, scheduling, and inventory control. Silva da Cruz shared, “Our global cloud deployment has slashed internal IT and application support costs by 20% and reduced support tickets and issues registered considerably.”
Furthermore, standardising on scalable Epicor as-a-service helped provide unfettered growth. Heilen observed, “It can be difficult to find talent. With Epicor Kinetic deployed in the cloud, we could double in size without adding headcount—we plug in more cloud resources.”
A significant benefit of standardising on Epicor is access to cross-company data. Silva da Cruz eagerly anticipates a seamless financial view of the entire business. “Epicor Financial Planning and Analysis enables flexible, consolidated reporting while eliminating manual Excel spreadsheets,” he described. “To see all quotes or all open orders, we use Excel to feed Power BI. Over the next several months, that will move to Epicor. We have big plans.”
At the top of that plan is improved cash flow management, budgeting, and creating a rolling forecast. Instead of a static, once-a-year budgeting exercise, a rolling forecast will help provide more detailed and up-to-date information to enable responsive adjustments based on market and sales data.
Epicor Enterprise Content Management (Epicor ECM) and Epicor Intelligent Data Capture (IDC) further accelerate this effort, providing fast, easy document recall, automated print routing, and visual order confirmation, helping to reduce strain on the DMN-Westinghouse procurement team. DMN-WESTINGHOUSE will deploy these benefits within its financial group for essential tasks such as tracking purchasing costs to identify price inflation and inform sales pricing.
Heilen clarified, “Epicor has provided us with the right tools and fields to collect the data, but we must use them correctly to ensure the quality of that data in order to be scalable. So, we are working on process rigor to maximize the value of our investment and, more importantly, to fully capitalise on further automation and AI implementations down the road.”
DMN-WESTINGHOUSE adopted Epicor Mobile Warehouse for internal logistics, documenting incoming products and raw materials and their movement from the warehouse into production. “The benefits are massive,” Heilen emphasized. Previously, the warehouse workforce used the ‘location unknown’ field for parts, which meant the physical year-end count was a nightmare. “Using handhelds and Epicor Mobile Warehouse enabled us to create a single, unified inventory management system across all our warehouses and keep track of the location of every product,” Heilen acknowledged.
An unexpected benefit has been staffing: “It used to take 6 to 12 months for employees to learn to recognise parts, making it challenging to get them productive. With Epicor Mobile Warehouse and the handhelds, staff no longer need to have all that knowledge before they start working. The solution knows it for them; they simply pick the amount and register it,” Heilen said. “We will also introduce tablets to keep track of products in production.”
As a result, instead of interrupting the business for 7 to 10 days to do year-end inventory, cycle counts are done with handhelds as a regular part of the job—a massive improvement.
Sustainability is a key underpinning of most modernization efforts, and DMN-WESTINGHOUSE is no exception. The company and its customers seek tangible ways to support eco-responsible operations. Also, the passing of new regulations, including CSRD, a new EU law that toughens reporting requirements, makes being greener a legal imperative, too.
“At Epicor Insights, we learned about advanced carbon calculations and reporting functionality,” Silva da Cruz recalled. “As Epicor can make that easier for us, we are looking at integrating that solution as well.” The ability to track and report on the carbon footprint of raw materials, kilowatts per machine hour, or factor in the lighting burden on a product will help to enable DMN-WESTINGHOUSE to meet and set new sustainability targets and support the company’s leadership in this arena.
Standardizing on an integrated, cloud-based Epicor solution is accelerating modernization initiatives at DMN-WESTINGHOUSE and helping deliver the future-proof infrastructure and data, agility, and innovation the company needs to grow its position as a leading global valve manufacturer.
Heilen summarized, “In collaboration with Epicor and Scherpthe, we integrated our business, consolidated data for faster, data-driven decisions, dramatically improved efficiency and resource optimisation, and advanced sustainability initiatives.”
