Carolina Container was founded August 8th, 1928 in High Point, North Carolina. Since then they have dramatically increased production capabilities, increased the number of distribution warehouses, added a design center, and now even have a contract packaging facility. We are an old company with new company vision and a quality of forward thinking to meet all our customers’ challenging requirements.
Caroling Container started out as a making by hand shipping containers for the furniture and textile industry. Today, they are a modern advanced computerized production system, assisting their customers in all types of industries.
Interview with:
Karen Safrit
Director, Information Technologies
Carolina Container
How long have you been an Amtech customer and why did you select them?
We installed Amtech a little over 20 years ago and have upgraded our company and technology with them over the years as our business evolved. We originally selected Amtech after an exhaustive search of all the major enterprise software systems. We found that Amtech’s software systems were (and remain) the most sophisticated in the market, encompassing all areas of our industry with a particularly strong base in the cost accounting area, which was of great appeal to us.
How has it impacted your business?
With our quick turnaround business, it is important to have a customer service staff able to answer questions while still on the phone, and Amtech’s system lets us do that. Their customer service screen makes it easy to get all the data you need. It’s easy to use yet offers great navigation through the system and to the data. We have many customers using our Emotion customer service portal from Amtech to enter orders on-line and check inventory. They have 24/7 access. Customers today expect you to offer all the tools necessary to make doing business easy and efficient. Amtech’s Emotion brings a sophisticated level of interaction to our customers and allows our customers the flexibility to do business with us at their convenience. We utilize Amtech’s Top Gun wireless inventory system to manage our production inventory, work in process, and finished goods inventory. With 6 locations that include 600,000 sq.ft of manufacturing and 350,000 sq.ft of warehousing facilities, it was imperative to have a solid warehousing program and Amtech’s Top Gun assures our customers maintainable in-house inventories and quick turn around of their products. The Top Gun wireless inventory system allows us to track customers’ items from Raw Materials to the Delivery Truck. This technology greatly improves Just-In-Time performance and eliminates any errors from manual input. We know where everything is located. Our counts are accurate which leads to promises we can keep. Another area that is important to us as we grow our company through acquisition is the ability to handle multiple locations within a single database. Amtech’s consolidated database lets us leverage accounting and other staff to handle more business without adding more people. It has made our recent acquisitions easy to integrate.
How do you keep Amtech aware of your needs?
I’m an active participant of their customer User Group which meets 2-3 times a year. Participants put forth customer requirements and as a group we vote on enhancements that we’d like Amtech to add to their software. Amtech donates 1,000 hours of programming to the User Group at no charge each year. In fact, the owner of Amtech is personally involved and has fostered the growth of the group and partnership spirit. Having direct access at the top level makes sure our customers come first.
What is the latest innovation you implemented?
Our latest innovation has been the implementation of Amtech’s RPM plant system. It has helped us better track production time and waste reporting which has saved us real dollars and has eliminated manually entered data which used to have a lot of errors. It also gives us the ability to estimate and schedule our plants using actual data instead of standards. It has helped us improve efficiencies and provides us instant visibility to our entire manufacturing process which in turn allows us to better serve our customers.
What’s next?
Next on the horizon for our company are two main areas: RFID and Data Deployment. We have already begun researching RFID requirements for our customers and plan on being able to comply with their requirements. We are tracking Amtech’s RFID strategy since they will be an integral part of our overall solution. Regarding data deployment, as our company continues to grow through acquisitions, we will be making sure that users have better and more access to secured data. One way we will accomplish this is an intra-company web site conveying different areas of interest to our employees as well as documenting corporate goals. One of Amtech’s great features is their easy access to data and the ability to create custom reports using simple report writers. Amtech’s database structure facilitates our strategy of putting secured information at everyone’s fingertips, thus making growth easier to deal with.
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