1. SUCCESS STORY:
FAIRWAY PRODUCTS
Since 1970, Fairway Products (“Fairway”),
located in Hillsdale, Michigan, serves the
automotive, marine, furniture, industrial and
consumer markets through the production
of unique non-apparel products. Fairway
works with woven fabrics, non-woven, vinyl,
leather, foam, laminates, molded plastic, metal
stampings and even wood fiber components
in their modern cut, sew and assemble
facilities. With a diverse range of customers
they build protoypes, finished products, sub-
assemblies and components to customer
specifications and are equipped to produce
small runs for start-up companies and mass
production for larger clients.
Fairway is a modern facility utilizing
programmable machines and customized
equipment enabling them to operate
efficiently but they looked to INDUSTRIOS
to improve cost effectiveness and streamline
their processes.
The need for INDUSTRIOS
For Ray Lambert, CFO at Fairway Products,
having a system in place to allow them to
streamline their processes, improve inventory
control and data capture, as well as gain access
to much needed analytical product perfomance
data was vital to the company’s success. They
needed better information to make decisions
around product profitablity, information that only
a fully integrated system could provide.
With INDUSTRIOS, Fairway would be able
to improve processes throughout their entire
facility allowing them to spend more time
analyzing and less time on non-value added
activities.
FAIRWAY PRODUCTS:
“During training, we gained
alot of insight into the system
and learned how to structure
our data and processes to get
the information and results
we needed. The education
provided by the INDUSTRIOS
implementation team was key
to our success.”
Ray Lambert, CFO
Company
Fairway Products
Website
fairway-products.com
Industry
Fabric
Market focus
Automotive, marine,
furniture, filtration,
industrial, consumer
goods, prototyping,
entrepreneurs.
The challenge
Gaining efficiencies
and improved
inventory and cost
control
The solution
INDUSTRIOS
The Results
1. Saved 128 days
by automating
time cards and
calculations.
2. Gained 29
days through
elimination of year
end counts.
3. Improved inventory
processes and
mobile transactions
yield better control.
and accuracy.
4. Shop floor
tracking allows
production costs
to be captured.
5. Gross Profit
Report provides
detailed
breakdown of
manufacturing
costs for better
analysis and
decision making.
1
SAVED 124 DAYS
ON PAYROLL
PROCESSING
5
IMPROVED
MARGINS
1
REDUCED
PROCESSING
TIME
2
25 MAN DAYS
SAVED ON YEAR
END COUNTS
4
IMPROVED COST
TRACKING
3
IMPROVED
INVENTORY
ACCURACY
SOFTWARE, INC.

2. SOFTWARE, INC.
2150 Winston Park Drive, Suite 214
Oakville, ON L6H 5V1
T 905.829.2525 F 905.829.3349
1.866.275.9028
sales@industrios.com • www.industrios.com
Maintaining inventory control
Tight inventory control is essential to Fairway’s
ability to ensure timely delivery to their diverse
customer base. They use material planning
to manage their requirements and streamline
the purchasing process but once material
arrives the inventory control process becomes
critical. Fairway utilizes bar coding and mobile
transactions to record all inventory movement
including receipts, shipments, moves and
pulls to jobs. The INDUSTRIOS team helped
establish secured and non-secured inventory
areas as well as identified the data collection
points to support Fairway’s manufacturing
process flow. Darrell Derr, Buyer, said, “I’m
impressed with the level of inventory control
and the easy access to information. I especially
like the cycle count process as it allows us
to quickly verify our on hands and identify
any process issues that are impacting the on
hands and take corrective action; our accuracy
has never been better.”
Mobile units are used for cycle counting
to eliminate data entry errors and enable a
quick efficient count. Previously, Fairway
only performed a year end inventory which
took six people five days to complete and
resulted in significant write up/downs. Now
they spend half an hour each week counting
a segment of their inventory and only have
discrepancies that fall within their acceptable
tolerance range, and typically those occur in
the unsecured area where material is staged
for jobs in production. As a result of their
effective inventory processes and cycle counts,
Fairway has reliable on hands, meets deadlines
and has put an end to costly write ups/downs.
Capturing costs on the shop floor
With Shop Floor Tracking, Fairway captures
all manufacturing costs at the source. One
feature they particularly like is the ability to
see quantities completed and rejected at each
production sequence. With so many custom
jobs they needed to be aware of any yield
loss during the production process before it
became a fulfillment issue. Accurate costs and
up-to-the-minute visibility to production status
and any issues proved invaluable to Fairway’s
success.
Getting control of manufacturing costs
For Ray Lambert, CFO, it was important
to understand the cost breakdown of their
manufactured items. With the features in
INDUSTRIOS they are able to accurately
capture all manufacturing costs including:
material, labor, labor overhead, work centre,
direct purchases, and subcontract costs. More
importantly, they can see the cost breakdown
on their gross profit report. The report enables
Fairway to evaluate their product offerings and
determine whether they should discontinue a
product or if cost reductions could be achieved
to improve profitability. Ray found the training
and piloting provided by the INDUSTRIOS
team invaluable in helping them define
their processes, production plans, and data
collection points that enable them to capture
the costs necessary to the analysis.
Saving time while tracking time
Fairway implemented INDUSTRIOS’ Time
Card Management to reduce the time it took
to produce payroll and to get better accuracy.
On average Fairway invested 25 hours each
week correcting time card records, calculating
overtime, maintaining holiday calendars in two
places, and double checking hours to ensure
all employees hours were accounted for.
Fairway implemented a feature called Time
Card Adjustments that automatically adjusts
clock in or out times based on the grace periods
established in the system. Time cards records
are now consistent across the company. They
also leveraged the Overtime Calculation to
calculate overtime and double time. Fairway
defined their calculation rules in the system and
now runs the calculation at the end of each pay
period. It eliminated an intensive manual process
and the potential for errors that went along with
it. With the calculation automatically generating
the applicable transactions for each eligible
employee they now have a complete payroll
record in one place.
According to Kathleen Ellis, Human
Resources Manufacturing, “...the entire payroll
process is much more efficient and it’s easier
to visualize employees’ hours and ensure
all hours are accounted for. Time Card
Management has lightened my payroll work
load by 80% and I expect further reductions
when I implement the Holiday Calculation.”
With the total integration INDUSTRIOS
provided, Fairway Products was able to
reduce their costs, gain better inventory
and cost control, and now have the data and
time they need to analyze their business to
improve profitability.
“By capturing all costs associated with our manufacturing
processes, including overhead and labor burden with
INDUSTRIOS, we now have confidence in our cost of goods
sold and can do a better job of evaluating our costs. ”
Ray Lambert, CFO
MANUFACTURE INTELLIGENTLY