The company
ACS, a privately owned company based in Brunswick, Victoria, is Australia’s largest producer of quality wool, wool-blend and synthetic hand-knitting, machine-knitting yarns and weaving yarns to the local and international market place. Product lines include the well known brands of Panda, Cleckheaton and Patons, as well as Shepherd Yarns in New Zealand.
Australian Country Spinners is the largest worsted spinner in Australia producing a wide range of Industrial Yarn qualities in natural or dyed form for machine knitting and weaving. Undyed yarns are used in a wide variety of products, but predominantly in socks and thermal underwear, and into high quality woven commercial upholstery. Yarns are used by all major knitters for finished products such as School and Corporate knitwear, Ladies and Men’s Fashion Knits, Hosiery and Thermal Underwear, Defense Force garments.

Whats critical
In the lead up to Y2K, Laurie Ellul, MIS Manager for ACS was looking for a replacement ERP application as the existing one, BASS, was not Y2K compliant and was no longer supported. While there was an upgrade path to the latest version of BASS, it required re-licencing, which gave Laurie the opportunity to review alternatives.

Among the key requirements Laurie was looking for in a replacement system was the ability to empower users in a Windows style, user friendly, GUI environment. Also key was the ability for future development to ACS’ specific needs.

Finding the right solution
Several alternative products were investigated including the latest version of BASS as well as PEERCORE ERP. The outcome was decided in favour of PEERCORE as it satisfied all of the criteria.

The payoff
Initial implementation was completed on time and budget and included changes to scan packing and developing a barcoding module for the warehouse. This has resulted in reducing staff numbers in the warehouse as well as sales administration. Additionally, the time taken for stocktakes have been reduced from a week to one day.

While savings have been made since the implementation of Peercore, the key benefit is the empowerment that this system has given to the users. They now have more information at their fingertips through the standard analysis and forecasting facility, extensive drill down capabilities as well as reporting.

Since implementation, Laurie has been working with Peercore IT Services to build in ACS required functionality. These changes now remain the intellectual property of ACS as they own the source code, part of the standard Peercore licence agreement.