Foundry sand and refractories producer Prince Minerals Inc. is adopting enterprise resource planning (ERP) software developed by IFS North America. The IFS Applications package is a component-based extended ERP suite built on service-oriented architecture (SOA). IFS, which indicated it has more than 2,000 ERP customers, develops ERP platforms for industries based on any of four core processes are strategic: service and asset management, manufacturing, supply chain and projects.
Prince Minerals is a specialty minerals processor formed by Palladium Equity Partners, and includes the assets of several well-known brands in the foundry sand and molding chemicals sector, such as American Minerals, and IGC Technologies. It supplies numerous ferrous minerals and ferroalloys, and a variety of customized molding sand products. Other product lines include metallurgical alloys and refractories for iron and steelmaking, abrasives, agricultural minerals, dust control products, and products for numerous other industries.
“We selected IFS Applications to provide real-time visibility across our enterprise, as well as for the efficiencies that will come in our centralized corporate functions including finance,” according to Prince Minerals senior vice president Roderik Alewijnse said. “We look forward to immediate improvements in our month-end close processes through streamlined cost and revenue roll-ups. Other efficiencies will come through native support for real-time collaboration across our various departments. IFS Applications will help us to accelerate growth, integrate our business functions and establish worldwide common business practices.”
Prince will deploy IFS Applications modules for document management, quality management, financials, distribution, manufacturing, engineering/product design, maintenance, sales & support, human resources, sales & marketing, and business intelligence.
The ERP developer noted that an important factor in the selection was the ability of IFS Applications to support complex batch and continuous process manufacturing, and IFS’s local support in the various countries where Prince Minerals has operations. “Also important was the agility and flexibility of IFS Applications to handle the diverse operational requirements of the various divisions and the ability for quick implementations across additional divisions in the future,” according to its release.
“IFS Applications is often the best choice for diverse and global operations like Prince Minerals,” stated Mike Lorbiecki, IFS North America vice president of sales. “IFS Applications easily handles a number of business models and modes of manufacturing and can therefore support multiple divisions of a global conglomerate. The fact that we generally sell and support IFS Applications with our own internal teams regardless of where in the world a customer location might be offers a degree of comfort and security that our competitors may not be able to match.”