Products & Services
Founded in 1937, Olson International Ltd. is a world-class metal stamping and assembly company. Serving primarily the automotive industry, Olson also makes products for industries including: electronics, lawn and garden, computer and communications, power tools, and hospital equipment to name a few. The company’s business model consists of contracting press time to its customers.

Olson International has a three-plant configuration with presses ranging from 50 to 400 tons. Plants are located in Chicago, Illinois, Lombard, Illinois and Matamoros, Mexico. In addition to precision metal stampings, Olson International performs staking, tapping, welding, drilling and assembly of components to stampings to yield finished parts ready for assembly on its State-of-the-art facilities and equipment allow Olson International to continue supplying its customers with high quality, on-time delivery and competitively priced precision metal stampings and assemblies. customers’ production line.

The challenge
With continual consolidations, company closings, layoffs, current implementations of imported steel tariffs and intensified global competition, Olson was facing more challenges than ever. The company had to find a creative way to succeed in a down economy, while constantly looking for ways to add value to its customers. Olson decided to look to lean manufacturing principles to survive the global battle for new customers and projects, while positioning itself for future challenges and opportunities.

“We were looking for a solution that would grow with our company and the lean manufacturing principles that we have adopted. The Infor solutions go hand and hand with the organization’s manufacturing philosophy,” says Greg Keating, corporate MIS manager.

With continuous improvement in mind, Olson took a better look at its planning and scheduling capabilities, and realized there was room for improvement. With the addition of new manufacturing plants, the company realized they had to cut operations costs by reducing the time needed for planning and scheduling. Ideally, they would find a planning and scheduling solution that could be run in more than one facility.

“We continue to find creative ways to streamline and simplify our business processes throughout the organization. The more integration and automation we have between our three facilities, the more we can focus on innovation and constant improvement,” states Tim Gleason, president.

Lean manufacturing measures are also being put in place at Olson in an effort to cut operations costs by eliminating waste and changing the way the company does business. “We pride ourselves on doing more with less,” says Keating. “We don’t want to throw resources needlessly at a project, so we always look to technology first to help us solve problems.”

The solution
Olson evaluated several planning and scheduling solutions before choosing SyteLine APS from Infor. “It was really an easy decision to make. We looked at other packages, but in the end, I knew that the integration with SyteLine, our current ERP solution, would be seamless. Plus, the APS engine that drives SyteLine APS is one of the best I have seen in a long time,” states Keating.

SyteLine APS is an advanced planning and scheduling solution that allows companies to concurrently synchronize materials and resources to customer orders while minimizing operational overhead. The integration of SyteLine with advanced planning and scheduling puts the customer order at the center of business model and synchronizes the manufacturing operation using orders, materials and capacity to obtain precise delivery dates for customer orders.

“With SyteLine APS from Infor we are now able to accurately maintain our inventory levels and forecast production schedules, thus eliminating waste such as overtime, premium air freight and many other factors that affect our bottom line,” continues Keating.

Real results
When it comes to realizing real results, Olson is very pleased with the amount of waste they have removed from their planning and scheduling process. “In the past it took three days to produce our work schedule for the plant and now it is done in a few hours,” says Gary O’Gradney, vice president and general manager.

Olson International was inducted into Infor’ Hall of Fame as a world-class manufacturer that excels in using Infor solutions to cut operations costs. “Infor has helped us become a world-class manufacturer by helping us cut operations costs, increase productivity and improve our quality while we sustain growth,” comments O’ Gradney.

“Infor solutions help us cut operational costs by giving us the information we need to manage our business. We have seen real results with the Infor solutions in the past, and we know that we will continue to cut our costs in the future,” concludes Gleason.

For more information call: 800-877-9256 or email