Established in 1914, MSA Safety Incorporated (formerly Sierra Monitor) is the global leader in the development, manufacture and supply of safety products and solutions that protect people and facility infrastructures. Many MSA products integrate a combination of electronics, software, mechanical systems and advanced materials to protect users against hazardous or life-threatening situations.
Increase in revenue, when headcount decreased 20%
Training app provides easy access to guidelines and tracks adherence
Single, integrated platform improved communications across departments
Like many organizations, MSA Safety’s back-end systems consisted of different platforms and various shared folders dispersed across operations, engineering, sales, and marketing. This led to mismanaged information, longer launch cycles, missed opportunities, and unnecessary or lengthy meetings due to miscommunication. Because of their various technologies, employees needed to rely on manual methods of data exchange, including sneakerneting or the sharing of USB drives, to facilitate cross-functional business processes.
As the company began to scale, Michael Farr, MSA Safety’s Vice President of Operations, realized the arising need to consolidate these disparate systems onto a cloud-based solution that would benefit them as they matured as a company.
“We decided early on that it made sense to move everything onto one, single platform. We looked at Salesforce for a PLM solution as people became more comfortable with working in the cloud and having all resources in the cloud. It just made sense for us to find a solution built on our existing technology.”
“We have grown our business so much over the last 20 plus years and, as we continue to add to that growth, we are seeing how Propel will continue to adapt to fit our needs.”
Michael Farr, VP of Operations
MSA Safety chose Propel PLM to drive greater productivity, efficiency and visibility across their organization. Because Propel is built on Salesforce, the only product success solution built on the top-rated cloud platform, they were able to leverage their team’s existing knowledge of the tool while also connecting all their customer records and product records into a single system. MSA Safety moved its disparate systems, functions, and processes into a single, integrated environment all built on the cloud.
“The return on investment was immediate. Processes that used to take months, now were literally taking days to accomplish and the communication across teams has been incredible,” said Farr.
“The supplier evaluation process has greatly improved with Propel. We have key suppliers fabricating products to our design and we need to qualify those suppliers and keep track of them in an organized manner. With Propel we can manage supplier corrective actions, supplier tracking and analyses while relating all of those documents to each other and to the supplier. It’s fantastic,” added Farr.
Due to the flexibility of the platform, MSA Safety was able to customize Propel to ensure their suppliers were well-supported and well-informed.
With Propel, team members can store and discuss product updates, engineering change orders, supplier updates, and more in a central repository enabling them to more efficiently search, access, and manage their product information. Because of the connectivity that Propel provides, MSA Safety no longer has to track down or search for information across multiple platforms. Propel delivers and enables collaboration across stakeholders, departments, and suppliers.
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