Testimonial: Innovative Control Systems

Today, Innovative Control Systems (ICS) is a significant player in the market to modernize gas and steam turbines in power plants, refineries, pipelines and oil and gas fields around the world. But it wasn’t always like this. In 1991, Patrick Nolan founded Innovative Control Systems based on the idea of reducing the cost of renovating turbines by using off-the-shelf hardware and software. Before ICS pioneered this idea the only way to upgrade a system was with costly proprietary products.

Within six months of starting the business, Lorcan Roche, a controls engineer and now vice president, and two other employees had joined the company. “The first years were tough,” says Pat, the company president, an easy going but very focused individual. “The most difficult challenge was to get in front of prospects and then convince them of our credibility – that we could extend the life of their plant by upgrading the controls systems. We were pioneers promoting the cost benefits of an open architecture.”

Pat approached the problem of growing his business the same way he solves other complex problems – through analysis, design and incremental improvement. “We needed to be able to provide reliable delivery of turn-key solutions. At first we provided only the engineering services, but that left too much outside of our control. So around 1995 we began to standardize some of our solutions by taking on the responsibility for sourcing components and assembling the major systems.” Sourcing, purchasing and tracking parts for specific projects soon became an administrative burden that distracted the engineers from their customers’ projects. This prompted the engineering department to seek a computerized inventory solution. Pat summarized, “we wanted to improve the accuracy and speed of the procurement process. We looked at several packages, but they didn’t support our business process. Our real need was a system that supported engineering and assembling projects to customer order with bills of material to identify and manage the components. We tried to design our own system with a local Microsoft Access programmer, but every time we wanted to add something it led to a whole new level of complexity and that wasn’t working.”

By 1996 ICS had grown to about a dozen employees serving customers scattered around North America. Pat was referred to Chris Trow, the founder of Business Planning Applications Inc., now Small Business Handymen LLC. Chris offered a basic manufacturing resource planning system that could be modified to meet a business’ special requirements and he also provided the personal attention to implementation and training needed by a small growing company. As Pat put it, “We needed a manufacturing systems company that would work with us. We wanted people that understood manufacturing and could provide software that supported our processes. We didn’t want to change our business to support a system, unless the change was an improvement. And, we wanted to implement the system as we needed it, not based on some standard plan.”

The first implementation step was to eliminate stand-alone spreadsheet databases that supported project purchasing and bills of material. Information related to customers, vendors and part numbers was collected and entered to the new system. The engineers quickly adapted to a centralized and standard system. The quality and availability of data was an immediate payback. The next step was to tighten up the purchasing process in receiving, checking and entering vendor invoices and payables processing.

As ICS became a known industry player, other companies began to copy some of their marketing and business practices. Pat explains, “This required us to become more competitive in other areas. We were able to win some deals based on a better delivery schedule, which was in part because we are nimble and quick and in part because we are now able respond more quickly and expedite our schedules. But, this industry is based on economics and the primary focus is on price. Resource Planner helps in this area by reducing our procurement and project management costs.”

When asked what it takes to grow a successful business like ICS, Pat responded, “First, you need an innovative product, a viable market and good people. Then there are a lot of details that you must manage to support the core business processes and a system like Resource Planner helps with those tasks. Our engineering team quickly got much better control of product configurations and purchase plans.

The procurement personnel eliminated a lot of manual effort to procure materials and obtained the ability to accurately track purchases to projects. The biggest benefits, from a management perspective, were that the project managers can still manage their own projects, but now they have a standard process and everyone can see all the details. Also, the system helps us look more credible to our customers, by being able to respond to more quickly to their inquiries or requests for parts.”

In the late 1990’s the overseas business grew and so did the shipping, product documentation and spare parts processing loads. This led to implementing Resource Planner’s shipping and spares functionality. It also prompted ICS to take further advantage of the data in the system. Pat stated, “It is our goal that a piece of information be entered once and only once, and that we make information available everywhere we need it. We shifted our focus from material tracking to design. Our engineers began using bills to keep track of product details and documentation. There is a big influence on the business to be able to look at history to see how things were done before and at what cost. It also saves engineering and management time in preparing proposals.”

Over the last few years it has become increasingly important for ICS to tighten their delivery process. Resource Planner has allowed their project engineers to become much more proactive in assuring that components are ordered and delivered on-time. As David Bureau, a senior project engineer puts it, “The system allows us quickly set up bills of material for customer orders. The real power of the system is that we can easily repeat projects we have done in the past cutting down significantly on our project cycle times. An engineer simply reviews the bills of material for applicability and then with little effort the material can be ordered by anyone in the company. Once the material is ordered, Project Engineers can track material receiving, material costs and direct shipments to vendors and customers. The bottom line result is that we have more time to focus on our customers and their projects.”

By continuing to provide cost effective, innovative solutions ICS continues to grow. This year they have opened an office in Huston to better serve that local oil and gas market, as well as power generation sectors. The scope of the projects has grown, with ICS typically providing the equipment, installing it and then providing ongoing services. And so has the size of the projects, with many projects now exceeding a million dollars. With over twenty employees serving a global market, Pat comments on the company’s system philosophy, “As you grow it is important that the system match the way you do business. It is also important to have an understanding of how an integrated system can work in your environment, so you can take advantage of this underlying structure as you develop your business processes.”

The future holds a lot of promise. Pat is excited about the industry and company. He sees opportunities for more growth, “The world is a lot smaller today. A guy from Indiana is no different than a guy from Indonesia. In the past, if they had a need, they called GE. Now when they have a unit that needs to be upgraded, they look on the internet and often find us. We are able to take the lead and develop it. For example, we recently completed a project in Nigeria that came from the internet. We were able to respond without having an agent in that country. This is the model for future business.”

Pat also realizes there will be new challenges as well, “We will have to continue to streamline our business processes and we need to further differentiate ourselves based on quality. We are about to become ISO9000 certified. Resource Planner has helped us in this area as well. We have good record control with security and we know everything is centralized and up-to-date.”

As for the role Resource Planner will play in the future, Pat foresees, “We will need to further integrate the design process with all the drawings into the manufacturing process. We still need to eliminate some post system processing that our engineers do today. And we need to better utilize some of the data we already collect.” As always with a growing business, there is more to do to remain competitive and deliver more systems.

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