“BatchMaster will help us become a smarter, more customer-focused company.”

Julia Folk

General Manager

Brilliant Group, Inc.

Customer

Brilliant Group, Inc.

Industry

Chemical

Location

Richmond, CA

Solution

BatchMaster Web ERP

Systems Replaced

None

Brilliant Group Inc. Streamlines Operations and Gains Agility with BatchMaster Web ERP

Brilliant Group Inc. is a leading U.S.-based manufacturer of fluorescent pigments. With more than three decades of technical expertise and a philosophy centered on agility and customer responsiveness, Brilliant Group has become a trusted supplier for companies needing specialized pigments and deep application knowledge. Rather than requiring customers to adapt to rigid processes, Brilliant Group prides itself on “fitting into the customer’s world” and delivering solutions tailored to their needs.

The Need for an Integrated System

As Brilliant Group continued to grow and the global marketplace became more complex, leadership recognized that its existing systems could no longer support the speed and accuracy required. While Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable were managed in a familiar accounting system, critical operations such as costing, pricing, forecasting, production planning, quality control, and BOM management relied on spreadsheets and manual processes.

These manual workflows created bottlenecks and made it difficult to adjust quickly to shifting tariffs, supply chain disruptions, and changing customer requirements. “Our manual processes required specialized skillsets and a lot of time spent manipulating data outside the system,” explained General Manager Julia Folk. “We needed to save the team time and energy, and we needed better tools to keep up with customer demand.”

The company also needed a more modern, user-friendly platform that would enable new team members to be trained quickly, an increasingly critical need as the business expands.

Why BatchMaster Web ERP

Brilliant Group conducted an extensive evaluation, engaging eight vendors and completing in-depth demonstrations with five. BatchMaster Web ERP emerged as the clear choice.

Industry expertise was a significant factor. “BatchMaster personnel understood our processes immediately—they work with chemical manufacturers,” said Folk. “The system felt familiar, and it matched our functional needs better than anything else.”

Other key reasons for selecting BatchMaster included:

Real-time costing and tariff management, allowing the team to respond immediately to market changes.
Integrated Quality Control and BOM management, replacing manual processes and increasing accuracy.
Predictive planning tools, helping the company better manage supply chain complexity.
A modern, intuitive interface, reducing reliance on specialized skills and enabling faster onboarding.

Budget and scalability were also essential. BatchMaster offered the industry-specific capabilities Brilliant Group needed, without the complexity or cost of larger enterprise systems.

“BatchMaster fits where we are today and where we want to be in the future,” Folk said. “It gives us a platform to grow intelligently.”

What’s Ahead

With implementation underway, Brilliant Group is preparing to digitize core operations across purchasing, production, quality, and inventory. The company plans to use BatchMaster’s predictive planning, costing, BOM, and quality modules to improve visibility, automate manual workflows, and enhance decision-making.

Real-time costing and pricing updates will allow the team to stay ahead of supply chain fluctuations and tariff changes. Integrated quality and BOM management will replace spreadsheets, ensuring consistent, accurate information across the business. The new system will also support stronger forecasting and planning, enabling the company to maintain its agility as it grows.

“BatchMaster will help us become a smarter, more customer-focused company. Once live, the system will give Brilliant Group the platform it needs to reduce manual work, strengthen accuracy, and support continued expansion into global markets through events such as NAPIM, CAD RETEC, ABRAFATI, Chinacoat, and major coatings shows worldwide.”

- Julia Folk, General Manager, Brilliant Group, Inc.

By choosing BatchMaster Web ERP, Brilliant Group is investing in operational excellence, better decision-making, and a future defined by agility and customer responsiveness.

About BatchMaster Software

BatchMaster Software is a leading provider of ERP solutions that help growing formula-based manufacturers streamline operations, reduce costs, and comply with stringent regulatory mandates. BatchMaster ERP is designed specifically for the Food, Nutraceuticals, Cosmetics, Pharmaceuticals, Chemicals, and Specialty Manufacturing industries, and can be deployed on-premise or in the cloud.

Contact Us

BatchMaster Software | 9861 Irvine Center Drive, Irvine, CA 92618 | 949-583-1646 |  sales@eworkplace.com

“From a program standpoint, you guys are phenomenal. You guys really figured out the manufacturing program side of everything; it just works. The programming of it is very smooth.”

Mina Mikhail

Project Manager

Miller Stephenson Chemical Company

Customer

Miller Stephenson Chemical Company

Industry

Chemical

Location

Danbury, CT

Solution

BatchMaster ERP with SAP Business One

Systems Replaced

Proprietary In-House Apps

Specialty Chemical Manufacturer Automates and Gains Full Visibility with BatchMaster ERP

Miller Stephenson Chemical Company, a specialty chemical manufacturer established in 1955, needed to modernize its “legacy systems,” which were limited and did not support its growth. After signing with BatchMaster in January 2017 and completing implementation in January 2019, Miller Stephenson successfully transitioned to BatchMaster ERP with SAP Business One. The unified system replaced multiple manual processes, giving the company real-time visibility and control to scale production and ensure compliance in a highly regulated industry.

OVERVIEW

Miller Stephenson Chemical Company manufactures a variety of specialty chemicals, including conformal coatings, solvents, oils, greases, and lubricants. The company also serves as the small-packaging distributor for Krytox, supplying products to half of America from its Connecticut facility. The complex nature of chemical manufacturing required a robust ERP solution that could manage production, inventory, and compliance in a single platform.

KEY RESULTS

Miller Stephenson sought a solution that encompassed all departments in one package and was specifically designed for manufacturing. They chose BatchMaster ERP, integrated with SAP Business One, because:

Increased Production: The smooth, automated production system sped up the entire process, allowing the company to meet growing demand and produce more products throughout the year.
Real-Time Visibility: Eliminated manual delivery of orders; sales, production, and shipping all see new orders instantly, enabling faster, proactive planning.
Lot Traceability: Gained the ability to trace every pound of raw material from the time it was received, and track products by lot number, allowing the team to investigate and resolve inventory discrepancies.
Streamlined Compliance: Achieved rapid compliance by utilizing BatchMaster's flexibility to quickly customize documents and forms (like adding terms and conditions to invoices) to meet new chemical regulations.
Improved Purchasing: Better control over inventory and purchasing patterns, including tracking vendor lead times and setting reminders to prevent running out of critical items.

CHALLENGES

For decades, Miller Stephenson relied on two legacy, proprietary in-house applications for inventory and order processing, with all other accounting-related functions being outsourced or handled manually.

The “manual process” meant that a printed order had to physically move “around the building” from raw material to manufacturing, quality, and shipping, requiring a lot of manpower and causing delays. Production departments would often wait for paper orders to come their way.

Furthermore, reporting and compliance tasks were cumbersome. The company struggled to find a single program that could handle all parts of the value chain: sales, production, inventory, financials, and payment processing.

SOLUTION

Miller Stephenson sought a solution that encompassed all departments in a single package, specifically a manufacturing-focused solution. They chose BatchMaster ERP with SAP Business One, because:

Manufacturing Focus: BatchMaster was a program “specifically for manufacturing” that provided the “full picture in one program.”
Flexibility for Unique Products: The system successfully handled the company’s “unique one-off products” and varied situations, which were a critical part of their business.
Strong Integration: BatchMaster's integration with SAP Business One was a significant benefit, leveraging a widely used platform with readily available online information.
Customization and Support: BatchMaster's team was willing to accommodate demands, such as changing invoices or documents for compliance, which other solution providers would not do or would charge heavily for.

BENEFITS

The implementation of BatchMaster led to a fundamental shift in operations, moving the company from its limited legacy systems to an agile, automated one.

Visibility, Planning, and Communication:

The system provided “visibility and communication between all of us.” The moment a sales order is entered, the production floor receives it immediately, eliminating the need to print or walk orders. This real-time view allows the company to accurately forecast and plan, build stock based on system orders, and eliminate delays caused by production waiting for work.

Inventory Control and Traceability:

Inventory is now “much more visible and accurate.” The system tracks stock levels and can notify staff when a mark is hit. More critically, the BatchMaster ERP with SAP Business One solution enables forensic investigation of inventory. If raw material numbers are off, the system allows staff to trace batch tickets to purchase orders and receiving paperwork to identify the source of the discrepancy. This functionality also extends to tracking non-inventoried items, helping prevent problems before they become critical.

Compliance and Quality:

BatchMaster manages the requirements of a regulated chemical company by centralizing document control. When a new regulation or term needs to be added (e.g., terms and conditions on invoices), the change is applied once to the sales order template, making it visible on every subsequent printed order automatically. This replaced the tedious, manual process of updating thousands of individual documents. From a quality standpoint, the customized queries created by the BatchMaster team have saved “thousands of hours of work” by pulling required details from various reports into a single, accessible view.

Purchasing and Reporting:

All purchasing reports are centralized, allowing the team to compare vendor prices, lead times, and quality side by side, helping the company “spend wisely.” The ability to add indicators and reminders to items based on lead times and usage history helps prevent stockouts, a common issue before BatchMaster.

READY FOR GROWTH

Miller Stephenson Chemical Company is now poised for ongoing success, equipped with an intuitive, robust platform that supports its growth trajectory and complex manufacturing needs. BatchMaster ERP with the SAP Business One solution successfully eliminated manual, paper-based processes. It provided accurate visibility and automation across the entire value chain, from sales order to shipping.

“The functionality of the program does the job that we're asking it to do thoroughly and engages the users to do their job correctly because it's the proper tool for them to complete their tasks for the day. By mastering the manufacturing program side of the business, Miller Stephenson has leveraged the integrated BatchMaster ERP with SAP Business One solution to build a foundation for maintaining high standards and increasing production, ensuring the company's continued competitive edge.”

- Mina Mikhail, Project Manager, Miller-Stephenson

About BatchMaster Software

Contact Us

BatchMaster Software | 9861 Irvine Center Drive, Irvine, CA 92618 | 949-583-1646 |  sales@eworkplace.com

“The BatchMaster support team worked diligently with us on all issues.”

Irene Jordan

Manager Information Technology

Company Name

International Paper

Location

Memphis, TN

Industry

Paper and Packaging

Employees

50,000

BatchMaster Enables Global Supplier in Fulfilling Manufacturing Commitments, Saving Time and Money

International Paper (NYSE:IP) is a global paper and packaging company with manufacturing operations in North America, Europe, Latin America, Russia, Asia and North Africa. Its businesses include uncoated papers and industrial and consumer packaging, complemented by Xpedx, the North American distribution company. Headquartered in Memphis, Tenn., the company employs over 50,000 people in more than 20 countries. In 2008, International Paper purchased the CBPR (Containerboard, Packaging, and Recycling) Division of the global supplier of Weyerhaeuser, which grows and harvests trees, builds homes and makes forest products essential to everyday lives. At the time of the acquisition, Weyerhaeuser was a long-time user of BatchMaster Software’s solutions for everything from formula management to (today) Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP).

Within this very large organization is a water-based flexographic ink business with operations in 11 locations throughout North America, with nearly 100 employees who use BatchMaster Enterprise on any given day. The business objective of this ink division is to fulfill all the company’s customer requirements on-schedule and at agreed prices, at a profit. With major fluctuations in customer order patterns, these operations have maintain sizable safety stocks or had to be prepared to pay premium prices for delivery of short items if they were to meet customer requirements. As the scale of business grew, so did the severity of this problem.

Goals

Solutions

Results

In 1998, the staff realized that the manufacturing system, a semicustom mainframe-based inventory, sales, and purchase order management system, was no longer adequate to support their business. They then developed a list of criteria for their new system, which included immediate access to inventories from all ink manufacturing sites within the company (then 6).Further, they specified that inventories should be updated as batches were closed at the various plants by personnel on the floor rather than later by a separate administrative support group. This would reduce the time to update inventories and eliminate confusion and errors in entry. Of course, the product had to be easy to learn and use.

Time for a New System

Doug Miller, Lab Manager, first implemented the DOS version of BatchMaster years ago, in 1998. BatchMaster DOS met their criteria for real-time inventory control from multiple locations. Beyond that, Doug was excited about BatchMaster’s superior Lab and Formulation, offering Doug and his team substantial improvements in control and flexibility in formulations over the features of the legacy system and spreadsheets they’d been using to maintain thousands of formulations. Weyerhaeuser pressed ahead with increased reliance upon BatchMaster DOS until 2002 when they moved to BatchMaster Enterprise. Irene Jordan, the IT Manager supporting these operations, led a small team of inside consultants to work with BatchMaster’s consultants to accomplish this transition. Irene managed the modification or elimination of in-place procedural flows that had their roots in overcoming limitations of previous process automation software so that the company could take full advantage of BatchMaster Enterprise’s broad range of facilities.

These procedures were no longer required without the limitations imposed by an outdated manufacturing application. According to Irene, “The transition from DOS and Btrieve to Windows and MS SQL was certainly a challenge. But the BatchMaster support team worked diligently with us on all issues.”

Quick Quality Queries

One of the most important advances from the second to the fifth generation of BatchMaster is BatchMaster Enterprise’s foundation in Microsoft SQL. Doug routinely asks one of his in-house software analysts to develop a new “Crystal Report,” accessing SQL records in BatchMaster Enterprise, to better manage his business.

According to Doug, with BatchMaster, “you’re limited only by your imagination” regarding the inquiries you can make to support whatever analysis would be useful in managing your business. For example, Doug wanted to equip his Purchasing people with real-time access to inventory levels based upon closed batch orders, which are recorded individually throughout the work day. This was accomplished using a new Crystal Report, accessible at all times to all Purchasing personnel, regardless of location.

Real-time access to updated inventory allows Purchasing staff to avoid critical shortages and reduce the number of periodic adjustments in inventory for discrepancies between virtual and physical counts. Beyond these improvements, Purchasing staff can now consolidate orders for amore economical order quantity, manage inventory with greater confidence of not compromising production and service capability, and save money, too.

On the formulation side, SQL queries make possible the easy analysis of any “problem formula, ”that is, any formula with a plus or minus 10% content for critical ingredients so that Doug and his team can determine effectiveness and profitability with these formulas, and determine to continue or discontinue given products. Doug’s team makes heavy use, too, of “where used” and “physical properties” reports for global substitutions on the one hand and regulatory compliance on the other. Both reports result in substantial savings of time, and time is money in this case

“I'm sold on BatchMaster. It's a robust application, and it works.”

– Doug Miller

Manager Laboratory

(Product Development)

Today, BatchMaster provides all customers access to this data in dynamic Operational and Management Dashboards. Many of the reports that customers would once create can now be generated through the drag-and-drop display of data in dashboards. Areas such as inventory, shipping, receiving, sales, purchasing, and quality control have their dashboards showing either current or historical data, depending upon the users’ request. Once data displays are to the users’ satisfaction, unlimited numbers of user-configured reports can be stored and accessed on the fly, with the ability to export them to Microsoft Excel.

Procurement Pay-Off

Doug concluded, “I’m sold on BatchMaster Enterprise. It’s a robust application that works. BatchMaster Enterprise is the foundation for all the important decision-making for all our users to ensure quality, compliance, control costs and increase throughput.” Since their staff has continued to discover ways to streamline production and increase effectiveness with BatchMaster Enterprise, the company has added significant licenses to serve more users throughout North America. That and all the effort they’ve expended alongside their BatchMaster Software support team makes for an enduring commitment; committed to more throughput, better control, cost savings, and increased profitability. Appropriate to operations within a Fortune 500 company, should appeal to process manufacturing operations of any size, anywhere.

About BatchMaster Software

BatchMaster Software is a leading provider of ERP solutions that help formula-based manufacturers streamline their operations and scale production, while reducing costs and complying with changing customer demands and ever more stringent regulatory mandates. The company delivers industry specific solutions for Food, Beverage, Nutraceuticals, Pharmaceuticals, Cosmetics, Chemicals, and other process industries. BatchMaster ERP is seamlessly embedded within SAP Business One providing a single comprehensive process manufacturing ERP solution available on premise and in the cloud. BatchMaster Software has been serving the process manufacturing market for over 30 years and supports thousands of customers worldwide.

Contact Us

BatchMaster Software | 9861 Irvine Center Drive, Irvine, CA 92618 | 949-583-1646 | sales@eworkplace.com

“Also, having access to all the chemicals and their properties right within one system will be revolutionary.”

Misti Gerbensky

Director of R&D, Athea Labs

Customer

Athea Labs

Industry

Specialty Chemicals

Location

Milwaukee, WI

Users

Solution

BatchMaster ERP with
SAP Business One

Athea Labs Completes Their 'ERP Overhaul' With BatchMaster ERP

Overdue for an ERP Update, Athea Labs Embraces Change While Sharing Their Excitement

Athea Labs is now in the final stages of implementing BatchMaster ERP with SAP Business One, and they couldn’t be more energized. The company knows how to leverage its manufacturing, quality, and product development expertise, and implementing BatchMaster ERP will complement this expertise and be key to its future growth.

For over 35 years, Athea Labs has been fine-tuning its knowledge and skills and delivering specialty chemicals and specialty products to customers in the Midwest and surrounding states. Athea Labs is an industry leader in the niche market of chemical specialties, manufacturing products from herbicides to insecticides to industrial cleaners to aerosols. In addition to its enormous private label business, Athea Labs developed its product label, Total Solutions.

Long Overdue Need for a Comprehensive, Integrated Solution

Over the years, Athea Labs has utilized several independent programs and the knowledge and know-how of many key employees with department expertise to keep things running smoothly. An old ERP solution (20+ years) running on an AS-400 was at the core of the business operations. Like most old solutions, the product had become so specialized for Athena’s needs that updates to current releases was no longer possible. To add to this limitation, their old ERP solution was missing key functions, such as MRP and MPS, which were needed to drive Inventory and Manufacturing requirements. This meant that Athea had to get creative with developing their functions outside the old ERP solution.

One of the functions maintained in Athea’s old ERP solution was Production Work Orders and routings, but without Planning. “Without an MRP/MPS integrated solution, we needed to enter our customer orders into the system Pick Slips manually,” shared John Olson, VP of Operations. “Our old ERP solution did not maintain a Lot Number/Location relationship for our items, and since we inventory all our chemicals and finished goods by lot number, the process of locating the First Expired, First Out (FEFO) quantity of our chemicals could sometimes end up being along and tedious process,” added Olson.

“Between our own chemical manufacturing, our private label manufacturing, and our Wet Wipe manufacturing, we have a large quantity of work orders per week. In addition, we also have multiple locations where we store our chemicals,” discussed Olson. “BatchMaster ERP is going to help us in manufacturing in a number of ways. First having the lot number with location on the Pick Slip will be huge. Expiration dates will also be linked by lot number, so that we are certain to be pulling the FEFO quantity from the area.” Olson said another big benefit will be with their inventory stock levels. “The integration of inventory quantities with Manufacturing, Sales Order, and MRP will result in much lower quantities of inventory being stocked and much faster turnover of our inventory,” commented Olson.

Olson shared that without MRP in their old ERP solution, Athea experts needed to manually combine products with like formulas in a spreadsheet so that manufacturing could optimize the material quantities required to fulfill multiple orders with a single production batch. “BatchMaster ERP will balance our material requirements and combine finished goods with like formulas, which is going to make us so much more efficient,” smiled Olson.

Streamlining the R&D Process with BatchMaster ERP's Sample Management

Athea Labs has both strong Research & Development and strong Quality Management departments, and both these operations are leveraged effectively for the entire organization. With neither of these functions being managed by the old ERP solution, Athea had to again get creative in designing their systems to manage these areas. “Having the ability to enter a customer’s product needs into BatchMaster’s Sample Management is going to streamline our entire operation,” states Misti Gerbensky, Director of R&D for Athea Labs. The old process of managing and documenting our customer’s new products requires many steps and sign-offs. Sample Management has an entire process dedicated to handling customer samples prior to ordering,” added Gerbensky. “Also, having access to all the chemicals and their properties right within one system will be revolutionary!”

Gerbensky listed several other benefits of using BatchMaster ERP, such as improving communication by having visibility from manufacturing into R&D, ending redundancies by moving formulas maintenance from dual systems to one system, and centralizing QC results into one database. “I’m a big cheerleader here for BatchMaster ERP and the time-savings we will see is going to provide a huge advantage,” stated Gerbensky.

Bringing Quality Management under a Single BatchMaster ERP Solution

As the Quality Technical Director, Dale Hamann heads up Quality Management for the entire organization. Because Athea’s old ERP solution did not manage quality tests and results ,Hamann built a Quality Management System (QMS) to track tests and results for chemicals, batches, and cleaning & sanitizing lines, including company-designed inspection forms. “Some of our products are FDA regulated, so we must maintain SOPs, test methods, QC procedures, and additional SOPs for cleaning & sanitizing to meet cGMP compliance, and like several other functions, our QMS existed outside our old ERP product,” discussed Hamann. “Our philosophy is that Quality is everybody’s responsibility, and integrating Quality Management within BatchMaster ERP will make tracking Quality for each item at the lot level immensely easier. Also, using BatchMaster ERP for Inspection Plans and Checklists will weave our SOPs into the system,” shared Hamann. With BatchMaster ERP, we plan to roll out the quality standard used by our wipes for all Athea products.

Eliminating Paperwork and Streamlining Processes

A key benefit that Athea Labs will recognize at the Go Live date is the greatly reduced paper trail of their financial reporting and record-keeping required by the old ERP solution. “With SAP Business One as the Core Financials for BatchMaster ERP, we are extremely pleased with recordkeeping reductions and cost savings we’ll receive right away,” stated Kevin Behm, CFO. “With our old ERP solution, we needed to use an outside service to generate our invoices. If we had changes to invoices, this would begin a manual paper trail that was archaic and time-consuming.”

Behm shared that bringing the financial record keeping into the SAP Business One solution will tremendously improve their Order Management and Credit and Collections process. “We plan to use the Approval and Workflow functions within the solution to streamline our sales process. Some of our orders have several stages and processes, and the BatchMaster Workflow function can automate this. Also, we plan to reduce the paper shuffling that had been necessary when we sold our non-chemical products, such as protective clothing, along with our products. Automating these processes will streamline our ability to provide outstanding customer service,” concluded Behm.

Stacking Up the Benefits

IT Director and Internal Project Manager Tom Jones was hugely instrumental in the decision to partner with BatchMaster Software and has been internally managing and following the implementation process. “Getting lot tracking into one solution where we can apply the lot number beginning at PO receipt through manufacturing into shipping will most likely prove to be our biggest benefit of moving to BatchMaster ERP,” attested Jones. “The additional time it takes for us to maintain our lot tracking independent of our old ERP, especially when we have an issue with a product is super time-intensive. A single integrated solution was a top priority when selecting BatchMaster ERP,” added Jones.

“With the full integration of BatchMaster ERP with SAP Business One, we can easily validate our FDA reports, showing that products are released following all FDA standards. This is a must for our business.”

– Tom Jones, IT Director

We’ve seen how the Lot Traceability Dashboard is a key compliance function within BatchMaster and will be essential for Mock Recalls and FDA Inspections. With the full integration of BatchMaster ERP with SAP Business One, we can easily validate our FDA reports, showing that products are released following all FDA standards. This is a must for our business, ”discussed Jones. “And using Bin Management within BatchMaster ERP will vastly speed up locating first expired lots at their exact location.”

Jones shared that learning a new system has been both exciting and challenging. “As the Internal Project Manager, I’ve been involved in most of the training sessions,” states Jones. “Since an overhaul to our old ERP system with independent programs is overdue, we’re bringing together many people and departments within our organization. I can say that this project has unified our team and will continue to improve our collaboration. We are nearly ready to go live, so it’s an exciting time at our company, and we’ll be working side-by-side with the BatchMaster Software team,” concluded Jones.

About BatchMaster Software

BatchMaster Software is a leading provider of ERP solutions that help emerging and growing formula-based manufacturers streamline their operations and scale production while reducing costs and complying with changing customer demands and ever more stringent regulatory mandates. The company delivers industry-specific solutions for Food, Beverage, Nutraceuticals, Pharmaceuticals, Cosmetics, Chemicals, and other process industries. BatchMaster ERP is seamlessly embedded within SAP Business One, providing a comprehensive process manufacturing solution available on-premise and in the cloud. BatchMaster Software has served the process manufacturing market for over 30 years and supports thousands of customers worldwide.