Since its founding in 1934, Armstrong has pioneered an uncompromising range of fluid flow pumps and heat exchangers for global residential, commercial and industrial markets. The Armstrong name is a benchmark for quality in design, engineering and manufacturing, and their products are internationally recognized for design efficiency, long service life and operating economy.

As part of Armstrong’s extended range of services, it offers its customers ready access to expert, personalized engineering support. Their experienced staff addresses all questions and provides individualized technical assistance. From product selection to providing installation and operating instructions, Armstrong is a leader in technical service.

• Globally-based customers demanded a quick response to their inquiries, even when dealing with complex products that sometimes require extensive configuration;
• Product and pricing information needed to be available 24 hours per day because sales staff and customers are located globally;
• The time and cost to process an order needed to be reduced, so order workflow needed to be streamlined and integrated with ERP;
• Order accuracy needed to be improved because it was causing errors in engineering drawings and instructions, then products were being scrapped or needed to be reworked causing production delays

Solution: RAPIDS Product Configuration System

RAPIDS helped S.A. Armstrong significantly reduce the long cycle time involved in converting a quotation into an order thus virtually eliminating order accuracy problems.

RAPIDS dramatically reduced the time it took sales staff and self-serve customers to enter their quotation requirements, even when dealing with configurable products that had options, rules or constraints associated with them. RAPIDS did this by automating the information entry process and provided the user with the most appropriate product and pricing. (continue on page 3)

Armstrong's sales channel and clients are located around the world. To accommodate people located in many different time zones, RAPIDS is a web-based system that is always online, allowing users to access it 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. With the system allowing for self-serve, customers can even get product configuration, pricing and order status information without having to deal with a sales person. RAPIDS reduced the cost of processing an order for S.A. Armstrong by integrating with their Baan enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. Information entered into RAPIDS is automatically fed into the ERP system, thus removing the requirement to re-enter information after an order is received.

Further integration of RAPIDS with S.A. Armstrong's engineering and manufacturing systems has reduced errors in drawings and instructions and has resulted in less product scrap or rework. Information entered into RAPIDS gets transferred into Armstrong's computer-aided design (CAD) system, bills of material (BOM), and manufacturing drawings.

RAPIDS significantly enhanced S.A. Armstrong's overall proposal quality and customer service. They are a recent recipient of one of Canada's 50 Top Best Managed Companies award.