Alandale Industries, Inc. in Troy, North Carolina is constantly trying to build a better mousetrap. Actually, it's a better lint trap, or creel, or threading system, or isolator room. Anything that will increase productivity in a knitting mill.
Alan Gutschmit began the company in 1985 because in his knitting plant, he had the need to get yarn from the cone to the machine in a better fashion. Thus, Alandale Industries began the designing and manufacturing of such machines, which are called creels. Since the first creel was produced, Alandale has expanded to make a variety of creels with differing options. As other needs in the knitting mill came to light, Alandale Industries developed numerous other products to fulfill these needs, including Rotolator® machine fans, the false stop eliminator, an air-jet threading system, the Aeroflusher®, several lint vacuum systems, an air gun, and an isolator room.
A period of rapid growth meant a move to their present location in 1987. This growth coincided with a fact-finding mission at a computer seminar, which revealed the cost of IBM mid-range products was prohibitive for a company their size. " Also, there was not a software manufacturer who had a product that met our needs, "according to Carol Atkins, office manager at Alandale Industries.
"A customer can order one of three types of creels -- sectional, circular, or rectangular -- and then fit it with one of three types of tubing -- black, clear, or aluminum -- and then select the size the creel needs to be. We could not find software that allowed all of the necessary options, until we discovered KeyMan."
Alandale Industries has found its niche in the prosperous knitting industry. To handle their many customers, KeyMan was purchased and installed in early 1990. Alandale began with Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable and General Ledger. In switching over to computerization, they used their manual accounting system and the KeyMan system simultaneously for two accounting periods, and then relied on their PS/280 and eight terminals exclusively.
Alandale next installed Inventory Control, Estimating and Standards, Purchasing, Sales Order Processing and Work Order Control. According to Atkins, "KeyMan saved time for office workers, decreased the amount of paperwork passed on to production workers and resulted in better planning in inventory. KeyMan aided purchasing in checking stock and production was more organized!"
Since most creels are custom made, the turn-over needs to be fast. The average lead time for an order of one to eight creels of a similar type is seven days. Implementing KeyMan's formulas allows Alandale to handle all options -- type of creel, type of tubing, fan voltage, number of brackets per post, number of threaders -- in order to quickly plan material purchases and efficiently process the order.
As each KeyMan module was installed, Carol learned its functions and capabilities, to then teach those in the office who would use it most frequently. She says "KeyMan was a lifesaver -- to not have to manually post invoices, hand write checks, or do each estimate from scratch! The only thing that was better was when we got ReportMate™. Then we could pull the whole picture together."
Estimating and Standards helped Alandale Industries achieve accurate material costs and more consistent estimates. The pricing formulas in the Estimating and Standards module record the information for parts, so that when options and components are keyed in, the price is only a keystroke away.
"Creels are complex, multi-faceted items. Because of this, KeyMan is the only answer for our computer software needs!" reflects Atkins.
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