Innovative Bus Manufacturer Drives Cost-Savings, Process Optimization and Data-Informed Decision-Making
Australia’s largest and most trusted bus body manufacturer, Volgren, has delivered high-quality, cost-effective public transport buses since 1979. With manufacturing operations and after-sales support in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, and Western Australia, as well as manufacturing sites in China and Malaysia, the company is a proud local employer boasting nearly 90% of its production in Australia.
The company’s dedication to continuous improvement provides Ryan Scriven, IT and Systems Manager at Volgren, with the challenges he thrives on. He shared, “We are investing in our IT infrastructure to meet where the world is going, moving people from A-to-Z way more efficiently and cleanly.”
A major step in that journey was moving off a legacy ERP software to Epicor Kinetic deployed in the cloud. The mandate for access to more accurate, real-time data was a primary driver of that decision. “Information is key in any business,” Scriven explained. “With our previous system, we had a lot of workarounds. Data was static and accessing it was manual and slow. Epicor gives us immediate access and visibility to all the data we need. It’s far superior.”
Scriven added that the switch provided all the advantages of a modern cloud solution, including stronger security, automatic updates, and eliminating the risk of downtime associated with server maintenance.
Volgren also added Epicor Financial Planning & Analysis (Epicor FP&A) and Epicor Mobile Warehouse and is in the process of deploying Epicor Enterprise Content Management (Epicor ECM) to help enable effective communication and a single-pane view of data across departments—from sales and engineering to production and finance.
Implementing Epicor FP&A was critical to improved management. Volgren had evaluated a couple of solutions that didn’t make the grade.
“We went to the Epicor Insights conference—which I recommend to anyone who is looking at Epicor—and spoke with the FP&A developer and realized it was exactly what we needed. There has been no looking back,” Scriven acknowledged. “Our CFO is very, very happy with it.”
He noted several instances showcasing how the complete Epicor solution helps deliver value, such as predicting materials shortages and easily tracking cash flow without the need for running and comparing several reports. Another example is bill of materials (BOM) updates.
Because every Volgren job is a custom project, it’s not unusual for there to be a late addition to the BOM. Now, instead of a manual email or conversation-based process for sharing those changes, the Epicor solution triggers an alert, enabling the team to adopt a more proactive posture.
Furthermore, Scriven highlighted, “We’ve been able to take a closer look at purchasing and drill down into where our price breaks are and where they should be. With this information, over a year, we could save six figures quite easily.”
Epicor is a great solution and gives us immediate access and visibility to all the data we need. It’s far superior.
Epicor has also helped to enable more accurate costing to improve quoting and drive profitability, “We’ve been able to put controls in place to protect Volgren, ensure profitability and eliminate the possibility of rogue pricing commitments,” Scriven said.
Data visibility has also facilitated more autonomous decision-making. “One of the issues we had was people saying they could not be responsible for a budget without a clear view of how it was tracking,” Scriven admitted. “When fully implemented, it will be very easy for everyone to see their budgets so if they have the funds, they are empowered to do what is needed for the business.”
“Epicor is a great solution,” Scriven shared. “The more you use it, the more you learn from it. We are constantly thinking of new ways to use the information and to build upon what we already have in-situ.”
Volgren is on course to have one of the best years in its history, due to the hard work of the Volgren sales team. And Epicor is helping ensure that the promises made are kept.
In addition to providing clear visibility to current targets and how the company is tracking against them, optimizing production workflows, and facilitating profitability of the work, Epicor is also aiding Volgren in improving on-time delivery.
“Hitting delivery deadlines is always an issue with a custom product. Some years, we have fallen behind,” Scriven divulged. “This year, we haven’t had to make a single adjustment. It’s the best start to a year ever. A large part of that is because of the very dedicated teams that we have at Volgren and that they benefit from not having to look at static Excel spreadsheets to identify potential issues. We have all the data at our fingertips with Epicor.”
I'm very data-driven, and Epicor is one of the easiest systems I've found to navigate data and get access to that data. That's critical as we’re trying to be strategic and forward-looking rather than reactive.
Moreover, Volgren’s commitment to quality has also been enhanced with Epicor data. Scriven explained, “Our quality team utilize Epicor to enforce quality sign-offs, dramatically decreasing issues.” Those sign-offs are customizations created by Scriven. He continued, “One of the great things about Epicor is that it is intuitive, and customizations are very easy to do.”
Scriven offered his viewpoint of his experience with SAP software: “SAP is a good ERP, but it's also extremely expensive. And if you need a report or update, it’s quoted at an additional, astronomical cost. With Epicor, we can manage it in-house or, if we need to, send it to the custom solutions team at a much more affordable price.”
Volgren spent the last decade carefully planning the transition to zero-emission buses. As a result of thousands of hours of research and testing, Volgren’s popular Optimus E-Bus is one of the lightest zero-emission bus bodies in its class.
Epicor is supporting Volgren’s sustainability initiatives by providing insights into customer purchasing trends. “We can see demand and usage for diesel versus e-buses and use that information to match the need for greener transport options,” Scriven imparted.
Volgren is also in the process of implementing Epicor ECM to streamline workflows further and drive efficiencies. Today, meetings are the de facto method for discussing project progress and issues. ECM workflows will allow the team to check off tasks and highlight escalation points quickly. Scriven projected, “Epicor ECM will save 40 hours of meetings a month.”
Scriven continued, “We’re also very excited by some of the innovation Epicor can offer to help support our sustainability and carbon initiatives. The talk we have heard relating to carbon monitoring and roll-ups on the BOMs is exactly what we are looking for in order to sustainably develop our product and help ensure that our customers know exactly what the manufacturing footprint will be” Scriven summarized, “I'm very data-driven, and Epicor is one of the easiest systems I've found to navigate data and get access to that data. That's critical as we’re trying to be strategic and forward-looking rather than reactive.”
