Case Study:
MAXIMA RACING OILS
Overview
Founded in 1979 and headquartered in Southern California with 7 warehouses,
Maxima Racing Oils is recognized as one of the most coveted brands in the power
sports racing industry. Maxima formulates, develops, manufactures and distributes
high performance engine oils, suspension fluids, coolants, care products and
accessories for the sport and racing communities.
Benefits and Key Outcomes
Optimized fulfillment and shipping processes
Maxima now has automated transactions that drive and trigger other transactions. Management has full visibility into the shipment and warehouse fulfillment process flows. Staff create item fulfillments (IFs) stored against sales orders, which are then turned into a shipped pallet or parcel shipment. It’s now easy to see how to allocate goods to meet customer priorities. An additional benefit is the easy onboarding of new and temporary seasonal workers.
Documented workflows and bills of material
Documented workflows and bills of material are created for the oil blends and packaging goods for finished goods, identifying associated labor for each bill of material.
Lot controlled lifecycle traceability
Lot controlled lifecycle was a manual process, which was only offered to particular customers. Now Maxima has all 1400 bills of material supported with lot control lifecycle traceability. “We have full visibility with the click of a button versus countless emails and dead-end report,” said Brandon Ciaccio, Product Manager at Maxima Racing Oils.
Real-time license plate managed distribution
Maxima runs multiple sites in San Diego and applies license plates to each site. Now staff can click on an item and see the inventory by bin, which container ID or license plate is associated with the product, when it was produced, how much of the good is available, lot codes, etc. “We now have the most incredible visibility with just a few clicks,” said Ciaccio. “It’s flawless how we can see which goods are stored where.”
“You don’t have to be a billion-dollar company to leverage these solutions into your own footprint. Small and mid-sized companies can scale with NetSuite and ShipHawk.”
Brandon Ciaccio,
Product Manager for Maxima
Challenge
With its legacy ERP and paper-based spreadsheets, Maxima was facing warehouse management and inventory visibility
issues that were only growing in complexity. Sales increased exponentially during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it
became obvious that the company needed more modern ERP and WMS solutions. “We needed an ERP first, which was
really the nerve-center of our operation, and then needed visibility into the warehouse,” said Ciaccio. “Our warehouse management was essentially a spreadsheet.”
Throughout the operation there were obvious needs for updating the infrastructure. Pain points included:
- Unable to generate reporting without the system freezing
- No visibility into raw material stock levels, stock committed, nor stock allocated
- Lack of accuracy into finished goods, stock committed nor allocated
- No way to document inventory over sold when a sales order was applied
- No live correlation of raw material inventory needed for a work order to produce finished goods
- No live bills of material created for blends, finished goods and packaging goods were only created for
a few specific customers - Bills of lading (BOLs) weren’t created automatically
- Cycling through oldest inventory first was human based and error prone, for both raw materials and finished goods
Before, when a sales order was placed, a member of the sales team would have to walk across the street to the warehouse to physically confirm that the item was in stock and could be pulled.
Combining NetSuite ERP with the ShipHawk WMS Solution
Maxima upgraded to NetSuite and implemented ShipHawk WMS at the same time to address its warehouse and visibility
issues. Company management wanted complete visibility into the warehouse operations – how much warehouse space is
available, how many racks are available and where, what are pickers pulling in a weight mode per week, how many items
are going out – and to automate all associated administrative functions. Based on his experience with an enterprise
solution at a previous company, Ciaccio knew that Maxima needed an ERP and WMS solution that would fit the company
and deliver the visibility it lacked.
“You don’t have to be a billion-dollar company to leverage these solutions into your own footprint,” said Ciaccio. “Small
and mid-sized companies can scale with NetSuite and ShipHawk.”