Managing manufacturing in the cloud

Epic Piping moves its ERP solution to free up IT resources as business booms

It’s tough to spot a true market opportunity — and even tougher to take real action that delivers tangible results.

Start-up company Epic Piping saw that old-style manufacturing processes and attitudes were lagging behind what customers actually wanted. Could Epic Piping build one of the world’s fastest growing turn-key industrial pipe fabrication organizations?

Here’s how Jeremy Turner, Chief Information Officer and Chief Administrative Officer, put it: “How do we implement systems to keep up with a growth curve that goes from zero to a $200-million-dollar company, in a matter of 12 to 18 months?”

One key move was to put the company’s JD Edwards ERP business management systems — finance, HR, logistics and more — into the cloud.

The Epic Piping team went further than most. At the time, companies almost always deployed large-scale ERP solutions on-premise. Epic Piping saw it differently, and worked with IBM Cloud Managed Services to create a first-of-a-kind all-cloud deployment.

Choosing to go with cloud-based solutions meant Epic Piping did not need to rent data centers, hire technicians or install servers, and avoided a ton of distracting IT-related admin. And as a start-up using cloud means Epic Piping could ensure precious CapEx is directed to pipe fabrication and building the company.

“The result is that I am not the CIO that worries about infrastructure, and how many servers I have, and are they up and running,” says Jeremy Turner. “Working with IBM and the IBM Cloud Managed Services for JD Edwards solution, we have clear service-level agreements, performance metrics, and pricing that matches the way we thought it should be delivered.”

Epic Piping’s ramp-up is off to a swift start, moving from four original employees to 250 in the first 6 months, and peaking at over 900 within 18 months; all of them share Oracle JD Edwards EnterpriseOne solutions.

Real-world results

Turner explains: “We measure our progress by comparing what we said we would do in the business plan against what we actually achieve in the real world, showing us how we perform against our estimated headcount and administrative expenses.

“We think that we will absolutely drive double-digit percentage reductions in individual indirect departments with the automation and the capabilities of JD Edwards EnterpriseOne on the IBM Cloud Managed Services for JD Edwards platform.”