Rea Magnet Wire: Streamlining Sales Order Processing with iApprove™
Who is Rea Magnet Wire?
Rea Magnet Wire, headquartered in Fort Wayne, Indiana, is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of magnet and nonferrous wire products. They produce copper, aluminum, and brass-insulated magnet wire and bare wire used in motors, transformers, and specialty applications. Using QAD version 7.4, Rea processes high volumes of orders annually and requires innovative solutions to address inefficiencies and improve operational workflows.
“Considering all the vendors related to REA Magnet Wire and our QAD MFG/Pro systems, ISS Group in my mind is a standout in customer service.”
Dennis Rausch, VP, Information Technology
Challenge
Before implementing ISS Group’s solution, Rea Magnet Wire faced significant challenges in its sales order process:
1. High Volume of Sales Order Line Items:
- Rea processed 93,000 sales order line items annually.
Only 20% of these line items were processed via EDI, while 80% were manually entered into QAD. - Over 50% of the manually entered line items originated from existing customers submitting purchase orders (POs) via email in PDF format.
2. Repetition and Inefficiencies:
- Many of the manually processed orders (65%) were repeat business, highlighting a clear opportunity for automation.
- Approximately 45,000 order lines annually could benefit from streamlined processes.
3. Errors and Delays:
- Manual data entry introduced errors, caused inefficiencies, and delayed order processing cycles.
4. Special Handling Needs:
- Some manually entered line items were make-to-order (MTO) items requiring engineering review before processing.
- Streamlining email-based orders presented a significant ROI through labor savings, increased data accuracy, and improved process cycle times.
Solution
To streamline the Sales Order process for the Line Items identified above, the ISS Group iApprove™ Workflow Solution was implemented along with an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) tool.
The OCR tool reads the incoming emails from the Customers, ‘scans’ the data on the incoming POs (PDFs), and then transfers the data to iApprove™. The iApprove™ Solution then validates the data in real-time against the QAD DB and routes the Sales Order to the appropriate stakeholders at Rea Magnet for review, possible edit, and approval/rejection of the Order. Upon approval/rejection of the Sales Order in iApprove™ an action is performed (i.e., a Sales Order is created in QAD in real-time upon approval).
Results
After a successful POC, Rea went live with the iApprove™ Solution in November 2024. As of the EOY 2024, two Customers have gone Live with more to come in Q1, 2025. Rea expects over 40,000 Sales Order Line Items to be processed annually with this Solution, saving almost 700 Hours/Yr. in labor costs, in addition to the following:
- Reduced Sales Order process cycle times
- Improved Sales Order accuracy
- Improved compliance with audit-ready workflows
- Enhanced interdepartmental communication and collaboration
- Increased customer satisfaction through faster order turnaround
