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MMS In The News
November, 2003
New Provider Offers Window on Production and Supply
 Milford Manufacturing Services (MMS), a new EMS company
in Milford, MA, is offering OEMs a virtual manufacturing
portal, called The Looking Glass, which gives them
a real-time view onto the shop floor and into the supply
chain.
The Looking Glass not only gives customers 24x7
status of product builds and shipments, but it also
allows
customers to perform their own what-if scenarios
for such things as change requests, cost reduction
and ECOs. The idea is to “return an element
of control back to the OEMs,” said Doug Voiland,
newly named vice president, general manager of MMS.
Through
the portal, customers can access MMS data without
having to contact anyone at the provider. That
reduces
unnecessary communications, or noise. “If we
can answer 90% of questions in real time at the customer’s
schedule, we take a lot of noise out of the system,” said
Voiland.
By enabling customers to communicate more efficiently
with MMS, the portal also reduces the number of people
that MMS needs to service individual customers. As
a result, MMS expects savings in SG&A costs over
time.
Communications through The Looking Glass can take
three forms: alerts, library postings or threaded
discussions. For example, when a customer transmits
a bill of
material, it is posted to the library, which is
a depository for rapid deployment. An email-like alert
notifies all customer service team members that
the
customer sent a BOM. Threaded discussions, if necessary,
can follow the alert.
Customers can also use the portal
to look at the supply chain and obtain supplier performance
information.
For instance, The Looking Glass can show everything
on order for a customer. Other features include access
to online quality data and the ability to personalize
a user’s home page.
According to Voiland, the
portal was the deciding factor in landing two customers
recently.
Specializing in low-volume, high-mix work,
MMS began as a new company in January when Ed Price,
MMS president,
acquired the operation from Viasystems (St. Louis,
MO). According to MMS, the sale was part of a new
strategy for Viasystems, which emerged from a Chapter
11 process in January. Viasystems originally purchased
the operation from Price in 1999, when it went
by the name PAGG.
MMS operates in a 110,000-ft2 facility
with about 160 employees. At present, the company’s
sales are running between $1 and $1.5 million a month.
Voiland reports that at current levels the company
is both profitable and cash flow positive.
© 2003
JBT Communications. Reprinted with permission.
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