Marathon Paves the Way to Growth With Genius ERP

From humble beginnings in West New York, New Jersey, to an ultra-modern facility in Burlington, Ontario, Marathon Equipment Inc. has been a pioneer in the repair and preservation of asphalt for over 100 years. Marathon has built a reputation for quality and is now a leading manufacturer of road maintenance equipment and tools used across North America.

After moving into their new facility and a strong focus on growing their business, Marathon needed to improve their processes.

Needed: Automated Processes

Marathon had too many manual processes — and they knew it.

After moving into their new state-of-the-art facility in 2018, Marathon quickly realized that their processes didn’t match their facilities, and they needed to improve them if they were going to achieve their plans to grow. Marathon did most things manually and were relying on binders to manage everything from inventory to change orders. While this worked well when they were a smaller operation, too many things were now falling through the cracks, and orders were being delayed because of it.

Marathon decided they needed help but they weren’t sure exactly where to turn. They struggled to find a solution that met their unique needs and manufacturing processes.

But all that changed when they had a chance encounter with Genius ERP at a trade show. Marathon felt confident right from the start that Genius understood their business and could help them improve their operation. “We’re in such a niche space, and it feels like I’m talking — you know — some alien language whenever I talk to other vendors about what we do here. But somehow, Genius has heard it all before, and they were able to quickly make me feel like I could trust them on the answers they were giving me because they understood what I was asking so clearly,” says Phillip Rousseau, Project Manager at Marathon.

Error-Free Inventory with Genius ERP

Inventory was the area that Marathon needed the most help. “The biggest challenge Genius helped us overcome here was undoubtedly our inventory. It was always an emergency to get the parts we needed to finish our builds because we were so unorganized,” explains Project Manager Rousseau.

“Before Genius, our inventory was very barebones. We were always running into emergencies, running out of parts, delaying jobs. It was all just keeping track by eye what was on the shelves. The physical process of managing our inventory was a binder, and everybody would go to that binder when we were getting low — hopefully — or after we had run out. We were relying on the employees to, you know, notify one of our five people who helped with purchasing that we needed something.”

“Since we’ve been with Genius as of June 2020,” continues Rousseau, “we have not run into that problem. Now, with Genius, we’ve been able to allocate that job of purchasing to one person, and they’re able to keep an eye on things from their desk reliably. We’re able to place orders through Genius and track them through Genius, which is very simple.”

By improving their inventory management, Marathon has been able to speed up their production and increase on-time deliveries as they no longer scramble and run out of parts. “We were working between an eight to twelve week lead time,” says Jenn Brasher, Marathon’s Equipment Sales  Manager. “Now we’ve pulled that down to approximately about a four to six week lead time.”

Improved Communication with Genius ERP’s CAD2BOM

Marathon also relied on binders to share drawings and information with welders and other shop floor workers. “It was manual,” says Gaurav Kohli, Senior Engineer. “We had to make this weld binder with all the PDFs and give it to welders. And if there was some change in the drawing, we had to print it out — changing the weld binder.”

“We used to miss some parts, and, you know, it sometimes takes a lead time of eight weeks to order that part,” admits Kohli. “And so we were a lot more delayed in finishing our project on time.”

Marathon started using Genius ERP’s CAD2BOM system to share information, and they haven’t looked back since. Now Marathon can effortlessly transfer CAD models and designs into Genius ERP and seamlessly pass information onto shop floor workers — eliminating the need for binders.

“Genius has a lot of features. The one that stuck out to me personally was the CAD2BOM — getting our product designs out of SolidWorks. They promised it would be seamless. I didn’t believe them fully at the time,” Rousseau confesses, “but I figured, you know, there had to be some truth to it — and it turned out it was pretty seamless!”‍

Now, with a click of a button, Marathon can transfer all of their information, including part numbers and quantities needed, from SolidWorks into Genius ERP. “We have monitors at each weld bay. And, so, as soon as we change any drawing, it’s automatically updated at the bay. We don’t have to do the weld binder anymore,” states Kohli.

“Genius CAD2BOM really holds everybody accountable, not just the engineers, but the guys on the floor who are going off of their designs. Now with Genius, everybody’s on the same page because the work orders are up to date with revisions,” says Rousseau.

Accurate Job Costing with Genius ERP

Marathon needed a way to create accurate job costs, as before Genius, everything was done manually — and no one at Marathon felt like they could fully rely on the calculations. “Our job costs were a very rough estimate that was purely based off of on paper math, and those costs are always changing. It relied on people communicating, which is hard during the day when you’re busy,” Rousseau admits. Now, “I have a job cost, which is as up-to-date as it could possibly be on each bill material to give me today’s cost of goods sold on that product,” says Rousseau.

Genius not only improved job costing for Marathon, but also helped them to streamline their business and focus on their most profitable products. “I was looking at my catalog of products that we sold. We had over 134 different models of equipment. We’ve cut that down to 74 machines now, so 60 products were eliminated from our line, and we don’t miss them!” exclaims Rousseau.

Growing with Genius ERP

Marathon has streamlined their business and improved their processes — plus grown their business with Genius ERP. “Since we’ve had Genius, we’ve grown about 20 percent. We are hoping to grow another 20 percent in the next year or two to come. Genius has helped maintain all our work orders and our production,” says Brasher.

“It’s been phenomenal for us,” she adds.

To read more about how Genius ERP helped Marathon, check out the full case study here.

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We can help you like we helped Marathon. Book a demo today to see Genius ERP in action and what we can do for you.