Open Book Management in the Cloud
For more than 40 years, Argent has specialized in the fabrication and distribution of unique adhesive and die-cut solutions. See why Argent relies on the Plex Manufacturing Cloud to remain competitive and support their open book management. (3:23)
Video Transcription
Pat: It's important for Argent to have visibility because in the automotive industry, you can be rejected for a single bad part, and we ship out 350 million parts a year. So, it's very, very important that we all have visibility to see where we're at. So, if we are doing something that is not correct, we need to correct it now, not tomorrow, not a week from now. And PLEX allows us to see what is going on today in real-time.
Lynn: At Argent Tape and Label, we manufacture pressure sensitive adhesive labels for a variety of industries. I put open-book management in place because I wanted my employees to know exactly what was going on.
Bekah: Open-book management is a creative way of managing a company. We teach financials to every employee, whether you are a frontline employee, on the floor and you're running parts, or whether you are the CFO.
Lynn: So, by opening the books and showing them the need to have efficiencies improved, collections improved, it gave them a sense of ownership in the company.
Bekah: Before PLEX, we used a system that was not very user-friendly, and on top of it, it didn't house everything, so we had many spreadsheets and Access databases. And so, there wasn't one place to go to find the answer.
Pat: And without having a common usable, easily visual system, it was impossible for me to understand how everybody else's area worked.
Tom: The information of the data couldn't be trusted. There was old data, and then to try to put corrective actions in place based on old data and then trying to go back and figure out what happened after the fact was extremely difficult.
Lynn: PLEX allows them to go in, figure out what's going on, they don't have to get special permissions. It's clearly transparent. They can look and dig in and actually get the story behind the number.
Pat: PLEX has helped us be more proactive in our planning by allowing us a better visual of where we're at as a company, where we're at with raw material coming in, where we're at with scheduling and on the floor, where we're at with customer orders, what our customer orders do, have they shipped. It gives us much, much greater visibility.
Bekah: It's so easy to use. It's so great to find the answers that you're looking for. The ease of finding things in PLEX is amazing.
Pat: The benefit of having that access is that we're all working off the same input data. I don't have to rely on what someone else has in their drawer or on their computer. If we attach it to PLEX, it's there for me to see, for the next person to see, for everybody to see, and we're all using a common data point.
Lynn: Cash, money, that's how you run your business. You can't say, "Well, I think I have 10 rolls," or, "I think I have 10,000 parts." With PLEX, you know. It keeps track of your inventory. It keeps track of your manufacturing. And it just does an awesome job.
Related Content