Simply as Miller Fabrication Options performs a significant position as a strategic companion within the long-term success of OEMs world wide, so, too, do trusted suppliers in ours. Many distinctive folks and provider corporations over the previous six many years have offered the instruments, insights and merchandise needed for Miller to develop and meet prospects’ altering wants. With out these companions, Miller wouldn’t be the place we’re in the present day – celebrating our 60th anniversary, with no indicators of slowing down.
When the enterprise opened in 1963, handbook processes have been the norm, from components manufacturing to paperwork. As our firm expanded, know-how additionally superior. Embracing and leveraging it to enhance high quality, effectivity and customer support has been crucial to our capacity to evolve and thrive.
World Store Options partnered with Miller from 2001 to 2021, serving to us implement applied sciences that exponentially elevated productiveness. World Store Options gives enterprise useful resource planning (ERP) software program to small and medium-sized producers. Their insights and constant concentrate on serving to Miller Fabrication Options obtain its know-how targets – which was so efficient that we finally outgrew their choices – locations them among the many suppliers which have had the best affect on our success.
Mike Melzer is Vice President of Operations and Service at World Store Options. We requested him to mirror on our 20-year relationship and Miller’s sixtieth anniversary. Right here’s what he mentioned:
Q: What did World Store Options do for Miller?
We enabled Miller to gather stay knowledge from the store flooring for the primary time. That helped the enterprise run extra effectively and successfully. With the data our system offered, firm leaders knew when to purchase materials, when to place it on a machine, what their prices have been, the place their uncooked supplies have been, in the event that they wanted new machines and whether or not their estimates have been on course.
They have been rising quick in the course of the time we labored collectively, and we allowed firm leaders to sleep higher at evening figuring out they’d knowledge that confirmed the enterprise was on observe. We helped them guarantee they hit goal supply dates for OEM components, which helped them hold their prospects comfortable and their enterprise rising.
Q: What made your relationship with Miller so sturdy for 20 years?
Eric Miller and I are enterprise companions who turned prompt associates at our first assembly. We’ve very comparable backgrounds. We’re each near our mother and father and grandparents. We’re pleased with the place we got here from, and we each wish to go away the world a greater place. Our philosophies and firm cultures align. We each admire a great golf recreation.
We additionally simply work properly collectively. While you companion with Miller Fabrication Options, it’s like being a part of a workforce. They’re nice folks to work with. They’re communicative. They’re leaders on the subject of adopting cutting-edge know-how. They lean on consultants like us for steering and to know their choices, after which they go for it.
They hear and be taught, each on the subject of incorporating know-how and in all facets of their enterprise. World Store Options does, too. That’s basically our motto, and it’s how all of us get higher.
Q: Did the connection with Miller Fabrication Options assist World Store Options in any manner?
Eric tells me World Store Options helped Miller get to the place they’re, and we really feel precisely the identical manner about them. In some methods, our corporations grew up collectively. We have been each smaller operations initially of our relationship, so we discovered quite a bit from one another.
For instance, our store product is a couple of 95% resolution proper out of the field, however we labored with Miller to customise the final 5% to make it a greater match for them. So, whereas Miller has grown, so have we, and we owe loads of that to Miller. They’re an important good friend and enterprise companion who helped information us, simply as we guided them.
Q: Why do you assume Miller has been profitable for 60 years?
I believe it boils all the way down to their core values and their tradition. They’re sensible people who find themselves straightforward to work with. They’re all the kind of folks you’d actually wish to have as next-door neighbors, too. Simply rock-solid folks.
And so they’re at all times striving to get higher. It began with Eric’s grandfather and grandmother (firm founders David R. and Gerry Miller), and also you see that very same driving pressure in each technology of household management since then. They know how you can make high-quality components, sure, and that’s clearly vital and why they’re profitable, however in addition they stay their core values, deal with folks proper and function with integrity. They haven’t misplaced what’s vital to them, regardless of the expansion and success. That claims quite a bit in regards to the type of folks they’re.
Q: Do you’ve got a favourite reminiscence from working with Miller?
I went as much as go to Miller in 2007 or 2008, and I noticed Eric’s grandfather, Dave, out on the ground welding one thing. He noticed me and took off his welding hood to greet me, however he mentioned he wasn’t going to shake my hand as a result of he was too soiled. I mentioned, “Man, I can go within the restroom and wash my arms, however I’m completely going to shake your hand. What you’ve finished right here is construct an outstanding firm with phenomenal folks.” It didn’t matter to me that he was soiled. I simply needed to let him know the way a lot I revered him. I imply, to me, a handshake means one thing, and it meant quite a bit coming from Dave.
He was older on the time, so I additionally jokingly requested why he was nonetheless welding and never having fun with retirement in Florida or someplace. He answered by saying he was proper the place he needed to be and that “that is who I’m.”
It simply struck me to see somebody who had created an organization with a pair hundred staff on the time and was very profitable down there welding, when he very simply may have given the job to any individual else. However he needed to do it. You might see it in his eyes…in his smile…in his ardour. It was fairly cool. That’s my favourite reminiscence.
