FPD Company

FPD Company: A Legacy of Excellence

For over 40 years, FPD Company has pioneered innovations in titanium manufacturing as a leading supplier to the aerospace and medical industries. Trusted worldwide, the company specializes in closed die forgings, precision machined components, and advanced assemblies. With fully integrated engineering, forging, machining, assembly, and quality control operations, FPD Company is a premier end-to-end supplier.

Partners since the days of Syman (the predecessor to SyteLine), FPD Company has been a longtime neighbor and client of Decision Resources. For decades, FPD leveraged Infor CloudSuite Industrial (SyteLine) on-premise to drive growth. By 2022, the company began reevaluating their ERP strategy to ensure alignment with long-term goals. FPD faced a pivotal choice: upgrade their on-premise system or move to the cloud.

Weighing the Benefits of On-Premise vs. Cloud

Where a company chooses to deploy its ERP has a lasting impact on performance. Key considerations often include current maintenance costs, level of standardization versus customization, IT team size, and industry regulations. With future goals for growth and scalability in mind, FPD chose to migrate their ERP to the cloud. This decision was driven by several factors, including on-premise limitations such as:

• Ongoing Maintenance Expenses: With an on-premise system, companies must bear the costs of maintaining large internal servers and databases while also staffing IT teams for security, upgrades, and backups. In a cloud environment, however, the software provider manages the ongoing maintenance and security of a solution. Infor CloudSuite Industrial, for example, is hosted via secure infrastructure services from Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Infor OS. These providers ensure that data is securely stored and encrypted.
• Upgrading Disruption: On-premise upgrades are resource-intensive and time-consuming. These manual projects require significant IT effort, often pulling resources away from core operations.
• Technical Debt: Technical debt is a common challenge for organizations and occurs when technology maintenance and investments are deferred, creating a gap between a system’s current state and its optimal state. Data silos, delayed upgrades, and short-term fixes can all contribute to technical debt. In this case, FPD addressed immediate needs with modifications that worked in the short term but recognized the need to transition to a more sustainable, long-term solution.
• Stalled Digital Transformation: Modernization initiatives such as AI, automation, and machine learning are more difficult to scale in an on-premise environment.

After solidifying their migration objectives, FPD Company was ready to take their ERP to the next level by moving to the cloud.

Project Goals

FPD Company worked with Decision Resources to identify key initiatives for the deployment:

• Reduce Operating Expenses From Aging Infrastructure
• Always Be on the Latest Version of Infor CloudSuite Industrial (SyteLine)
• Eliminate Technical Debt From Unnecessary Modifications
• Leverage New Tools and Functionality Available in the Cloud

Decision Resources partnered with FPD to preserve critical customizations and deliver training and support, safeguarding continuity throughout the upgrade.

“The sessions I had with the Decision Resources developers really helped expand my understanding of how to approach customizations. I feel much more confident moving forward after working with the DRI team.”

-Lou Geier
IT Manager

Modernizing in the Cloud: Business Impact

Migrating to the cloud has ensured that FPD Company remains the benchmark for specialty titanium components worldwide. Reflecting on the upgrade, IT manager Lou Geier remarked, “Moving our ERP system to the cloud ensured that we always have the latest and greatest features in a timely manner. No more having to spend weeks or months evaluating patches and feature updates to see if they will work in our environment.” By modernizing with cloud-based ERP, FPD Company achieved:

• Continuous Innovation: With access to the latest software advancements at their own pace, FPD can evolve with industry changes and position themselves for ongoing success.
• Cost Savings: FPD reduced IT costs tied to hardware and infrastructure, allowing the company to redirect resources towards other strategic priorities.
• System Optimization and Standardization: Retiring legacy infrastructure resulted in strengthened security. According to Lou, “Transitioning from on-prem to cloud ERP allowed us to decommission legacy hardware and software which increased our overall security posture.”

The Future of FPD Company

FPD Company is raising the bar for cutting-edge manufacturing with its adoption of automation and AI
tools. Decision Resources looks forward to celebrating their continued success as they leverage advanced
technologies to deliver premier titanium solutions.

“Decision Resources’ bench runs deep with knowledge, expertise, and experience. They worked well with our IT staff to deliver the conversion project on time and under budget. Our employees transitioned amazingly well to CloudSuite and we have no regrets.”

-James Byer, CPA
Vice President and CFO

Explore FPD

For FPD Sales, contact Daniel Gordon: DGordon@fpdcompany.com | Cell: 412-618-8934 | Office: 724-731-2137

Shop FPD Products