Material yield: SYSPRO ERP continues to drive ”green” rewards

TriStar Plastics is reporting huge dollar savings and significant reductions in environmental waste using SYSPRO’s material yield system.An early adopter of SYSPRO ’s pioneering “green” ERP approach some five years ago, Tri-Star reports the company has saved “hundreds of thousands of dollars” and has eliminated the need to send “thousands of pounds” of plastic remnants to land fills.Aware of the vacuum that existed in the plastics industry with regard to the reclamation of remnants and the vast remnant piles being relegated to land fills, TriStar Plastics CEO Richard Cedrone urged SYSPRO to develop the Material Yield System (MYS) six years ago. At the time, Cedrone estimated that approximately 40 percent of TriStar’s inventory consisted of cut-sheet remnants. The company’s attempt to return remnants to stock for consideration in filling future orders was very costly.The SYSPRO Material Yield System accommodates customer-specific dimensional requirements and makes automatic yield calculations. In the plastics industry, this involves factoring the yield from full plastic sheets, rods, or tubes, and then facilitating the return of remnants to inventory for reuse. The system automatically creates new part numbers and pricing for the returned remnants, filling custom orders from existing inventory or inventory from another branch, if possible.“It used to be a time-consuming process of calculations and decisions to determine how to best fill custom cut orders in the most expeditious and cost-effective manner,” says Cedrone. “As a result, suppliers often found it more cost-efficient just to send their remnants directly to land fills. Today we’ve eliminated that environmental concern, and we’re getting a great financial return. Since we implemented SYSPRO ERP and MYS we have more than doubled our revenues while maintaining our head count because of the efficiencies we gained.”The SYSPRO Material Yield System has been honored with a Governor’s Environmental and Economic Leadership Award Certificate of Recognition from the State of California. The certificate was presented to SYSPRO “in recognition of meritorious contributions to environmental protection and resource conservation in the State of California.”