“Allweather Wood spent two years trying to install an industry specific manufacturing system and failed to get it in place. With few alternatives on the market, we chose to develop a totally custom application for our multi-location manufacturing and distribution needs. Software 21 came right in and helped us define the extensive modifications we required, then simply went to work and delivered.”

–Harold Osterman, CFO

Company:

Allweather Wood began operation in 1985 with its first pressure treating facility for lumber located in Washougal, Washington. Over the years, Allweather Wood has grown into a multi-site wood processing company with five locations stretching throughout the west coast. Allweather Wood now ranks as the largest water-borne wood treater in the Western United States, with a total processing capacity of over 200 million board feet of treated wood products. It is also an industry leading producer employing environmentally responsible and highly efficient production practices.

Allweather Wood provides quality building materials, typically used for decks, fences, docks, bridges and pole type buildings, to some of the nation’s premier home building and remodeling distributors, including Home Depot and Lowe’s.

Challenge:

"We needed to extricate ourselves from a dead-end implementation and source a strong manufacturing/distribution software product that we could then modify extensively to accommodate our unique requirements,” said Harold Osterman, CFO for Allweather Wood. “With this, we also needed to find a software developer that had the experience and staff to take on a one to two year development project first and could then turn around to help us implement the very software they developed. Allweather didn't have the IT staff to assist in the detailed programming and testing process to get it right.”

At the time, Allweather Wood was also pioneering very sophisticated production control processes which needed to be seamlessly blended into the new software environment, requiring a customizable solution designed to grow with their business.

Solution:

Software 21 took a generic version of FlexGen 4, including all enterprise modules, and set up a development environment for manufacturing, inventory control and distribution. Based on a lengthy design specification collaboratively developed, Software 21 proceeded to roll-out custom software on a process-by-process basis.

Software 21 employed automated development tools to create new software which dramatically reduced the duration and overall cost of the project. With a long history of providing custom software services to many manufacturing companies, Software 21 was able to bring strong project management skills to the task and keep Allweather Wood fully informed as to the progress and common development issues which typically arise during complex custom software development.

Results:

	After an 18-month development effort, Allweather Wood and Software 21 successfully implemented a fully integrated manufacturing and distribution system based on Allweather Wood’s unique operating requirements.
	Full financial reporting and control systems were included as an integral part of Allweather Wood’s final configuration.
	EDI communications was an additional technology requirement added to support Allweather Wood’s large trading partners such as Home Depot.
	Allweather Wood continued to expand its product lines simultaneously with the opening of new and strategically located plants, deploying FlexGen 4 with its custom applications supporting every success and growth opportunity.