Founded in 1985, U.S. Armor Corporation is a California-based manufacturer of comfortable and reliable ballistic vests including ballistic, stab resistant, impact resistant and flotation armor configurations. U.S. Armor products are tailor-made to achieve maximum comfort, coverage and concealability.

U.S. Armor is a leader in the body armor industry with their custom-engineered vests and mission specific solutions.

The Challenge

As knowledge of its field-designed, comfort engineered and street-proven body-armor solutions spread around-the-globe, U.S. Armor experienced significant logistical bottlenecks handling the demand for these custom orders.

Gathering custom specifications was challenging for most customer orders. Ballistic requirements such as product, size, color, material and other unit-specific configurations were unique to every order and required new part numbers, routers and bills of material to fulfill orders accurately. Additionally, each order was often triple-checked manually to ensure order accuracy, which taxed human resources and slowed down the manufacturing process. Another problem involved tracking customer orders. Every order was manually tracked, which often delayed production and elevated shop-floor inefficiencies as employees were taken off-task to search for orders.

Consequently, U.S. Armor wanted a comprehensive business solution that integrated their client management, manufacturing and distribution requirements, handled stringent ISO (International Organization for Standardization) standards, plus keep pace with increasing sales demand.

The Solution

To solve these business challenges, AccountMate business Partner, Tamlin Software Developers, Inc., an Elite AccountMate Business Partner that specializes in solving complex business challenges, recommended AccountMate SQL with Manufacturing Conductor™. Due to AccountMate’s scalability, open architecture and award-winning program design, being able to add industry-specific programs to solve logistical challenges was a seamless integration. John Kane, Chief Operations Officer of the Los Angeles region for Tamlin Software recognized that AccountMate and Manufacturing Conductor™ would be a natural fit. By customizing their AccountMate system, U.S. Armor could leverage their original investment with a modifiable solution that provided superior scalability for their growing, international business.

The first step in the company’s technology make-over involved overhauling the sales order process. Previously, custom orders required a new item number, router and bill of material for every unique specification. This was time consuming, labor intensive and error prone. To handle these transactions, Tamlin Software customized the existing AccountMate logic to allow a sales order configurator that creates new part numbers on the fly. As a result, customer service representatives can populate size, color and quantity for every sales order without delay which ultimately increases order accuracy, effectiveness and overall customer satisfaction.

Manufacturing Conductor™ for AccountMate provides comprehensive shop floor control and real-time management of all production activities. Once a sales order is finalized in AccountMate, Manufacturing Conductor™ automatically generates a new router and bill of material if needed. With a built-in order verification system, sales orders are automatically approved before moving to production, eliminating time-consuming manual order verification, guesswork and warehouse inefficiencies.

By capturing real-time visibility of all shop floor activity, orders can be tracked at any given time of day. “Previously it took almost 60 minutes to verify the status of an order”, recalls Bob Rowland, Director of Business Development, U.S. Armor, “Because it took so long to answer inquiries, clients would often contact multiple people for order status. Having multiple employees track the same order was a huge disruption to our business. Now any employee can verify order status in less than one minute.”

Manufacturing Conductor™ supports ISO quality control initiatives so company employees can monitor processes, maintain adequate records and trace the root cause of any problem or non-conformance in record time. Together, AccountMate and Manufacturing Conductor™ ensure the continuum between order taking, planning, scheduling and execution of all business activities.

The Results

Using an industry-specific solution for manufacturing functions and AccountMate financial software as their business backbone, U.S. Armor has a complete business management solution boosting company on-time shipping from 30% to 85%.

“The integrated solution of AccountMate and Manufacturing Conductor™ has resulted in strong teamwork within U.S. Armor. Order entry and the production teams are working more efficiently than ever, says Rowland. “The combination of AccountMate and Manufacturing Conductor™ also supports our ISO certification process and on going internal audits. ISO is an essential part of our business and having software that supports it saves us time and money.”

About the Client

Founded in 1985, U.S. Armor develops and manufactures custom-engineered ballistic vests offering concealable, tactical and mission specific solutions. U.S. Armor can be reached at 800-443-9798 or at www.usarmor.com.

About Tamlin Software Developers, Inc.

With multiple offices, Tamlin Software Developers, Inc. is a fully coast-to-coast operation that specializes in providing integrated accounting solutions. Tamlin developed Manufacturing Conductor™ and has been providing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Shop Floor Control solutions to small to mid-range manufacturers and distributors since 1991. Tamlin can be reached at (214) 739-6576 or at www.tamlinsoftware.com.

About AccountMate

Founded in 1984, AccountMate develops and markets fully modifiable business accounting software. Systems range from single user versions to those that support hundreds of users simultaneously. AccountMate software is distributed exclusively through a worldwide channel of authorized solution providers. AccountMate can be reached at (800) 877-8896 or at www.accountmate.com

About Third Party Solutions

Manufacturing Conductor™ by Tamlin Software is a shop floor control system that provides robust, cost-effective, real-time, “total” business management that links the shop floor with the back office, optimizing business operations.