Dave Haskin, Kinaxis chief technology officer. (Darren Brown, OBJ)

In today's volatile manufacturing industry, one local company says the lessons it learned during the tech bust have put it in a better position to understand its customers' needs and stay on top of emerging trends.

Kinaxis, formerly Webplan, has developed its supply chain response management software in order to meet the requirements of the electronics manufacturers it targets.

"We help manufacturers respond quickly to changes in their business, particularly when they have challenges of rapid changes in forecast or supply disruptions," says Dave Haskins, the company's chief technology officer. "One of the biggest challenges is a lot of manufacturers are outsourcing primarily to Asia and they find challenges in managing their extended supply chain."

Kinaxis has developed a web-based solution, called "RapidResponse," that allows clients to access a central system that allows them to simulate potential changes and determine proper responses. Mr. Haskins says success in manufacturing nowadays is determined by a company's speed and effectiveness in responding to change and use of the Internet has made these necessities much easier.

"The primary shift (in the industry) has been the focus on leveraging the Internet for global access because many of our customers used to have plants across various states in the U.S., but now they have a manufacturing operation that might be distributed globally," he says. "As a result, they really need web-based global access to a response management solution."

Mr. Haskins adds that one way Kinaxis was able to weather the tech bust and continue to compete with its rivals is through product investment.

"In the boom time we were fortunate to raise some capital for investments and the smartest thing we did was not spend it all," he says. "We invested quite a lot in our product over the last couple of years to make it really easy to install and that has translated into much lower risk for a buyer of a software."

Mr. Haskins says despite the recent signs of growth in the tech industry, clients are still much more careful about their purchases, the quantity they require and the necessity of immediate value.

"As a result, we've put a lot of energy into ensuring that our customer will see value in about 90 days of installing our software," he says.

He says that Kinaxis and all companies in the high tech industry have had to learn how to take measured steps when looking at growth opportunities and the lessons realized during the boom/bust cycle will resonate for years to come.

"We had to manage our business more prudently and learn not to overextend ourselves too quickly because then your costs can get too high and ultimately you run into a capitalization problem. High tech as a whole sort of had to grow up a bit and act a lot more like traditional businesses."

He says another challenge in the manufacturing industry is the potential difficulty of managing a supply chain that is spread across different companies. This challenge creates a need for businesses to find new ways to work together in order to compete in the marketplace.

He says one example of companies building competitive advantages is a new relationship between Kinaxis and Adeptron Technologies Corp., which provides electronics manufacturing services.

"Kinaxis RapidResponse was the perfect solution to address our need for improved analysis and responsiveness," says Geoff Beale, vice-president of operations for Adeptron, which is based in Ottawa and Markham. "We believe our success is dependent upon our ability to build a business that is entirely structured around providing solutions to our customers' challenges and being responsive to their changing demands."

Mr. Haskins says he sees a trend in Canada as more and more contract manufacturers, such as Adeptron and BreconRidge, move towards specializing in low volume, high-mixed products.

"The concept of providing a more configurable product is often how manufacturers are competing today, rather than just having a product with little choice," he says. "If you have a highly configurable product where the customer gets to make a lot of choice then it means better service for the customer, but the challenge is it's more difficult to manufacture because you don't know what the forecast will be for particular models of the product."

Mr. Haskins says this challenge is why companies who want to provide a highly volatile product mix need Kinaxis' software solution to help them manage their businesses more effectively. He adds that the company is also fortunate to work with many of the large original equipment manufacturers who outsource much of their manufacturing operations.

"They use RapidResponse to model all of the activity in their outsourced manufacturers and we're effectively help them become virtual manufacturers with our technology," he says. "That trend towards virtual manufacturing is where we see some strong growth in the industry because the specialty manufacturers will get better at what they do and the virtual manufacturers will be providing added value services and capabilities on top of the basic manufacturing."