Garden City, Kansas Case Study

Background

The city of Garden City, Kansas is home to approximately 32,000 residents. The city is one of the fastest growing in southwest Kansas, appearing as an oasis against miles and miles of surrounding farmland.

The electrical and water utilities divisions within the city are in charge of making sure over 11,000 businesses and residences have electricity, and over 8,500 have water. All of this is done while also keeping records of all spending and maintenance of over 1,500 pieces of equipment. In addition to running the electric and water utilities, they also maintain the waste water treatment plant along with 300 miles of sanitary sewer lines. This is a monumental task, requiring accurate maintenance and spending history to ensure the city’s residents are served well.

The Challenges

Originally, they maintained all 3.5 million dollars worth of inventory through a home-grown internal system created by one of their I.T. employees. All purchase orders and work orders had to be done on paper, which proved difficult to track. Every year, the city has outside auditors do an in-depth analysis of the city’s financial records. Since their old system did not have data on purchasing or repair costs, when the auditors came, sometimes the numbers didn’t quite add up. As a result, Garden City was cited two years in a row for the discrepancies.

Their old system got the job done in the beginning, but as the city started to grow, so did their maintenance, inventory, and purchasing management needs.

"Garden City is a growing community and we keep bringing in more and more material for development purposes, so the value of the inventory continued to climb. We had to get a better handle on that," Public Utilities Director Mike Muirhead explained.

The Solution

The city had to make some changes in order to improve their audit results. Officials met with the auditors and went over exactly what the discrepancies were and how they could be tracked and eliminated in the future. During this discussion, Mike realized that their homegrown internal system just wasn’t going to cut it anymore. They needed to get a robust inventory, work order, and purchase tracking system in place fast.

When Mike first started searching for a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS), an employee in their finance department told him about the success a local ethanol plant was having with MAPCON. He contacted the plant immediately and asked if he could tour their facility and find out more about how they use the software. After seeing MAPCON in action, his decision was made.

"Seeing the actual system and what it could do is what convinced me," he explained.

Soon after, he contacted MAPCON’s sales team and got the ball rolling. He told them all about the departments, the previous audits, and what they were looking for. After observing first-hand what MAPCON could do and talking with the friendly and knowledgeable sales staff, MAPCON was purchased and on-site training was scheduled.

"All of the sales folks were very easy to get along with, and it wasn’t a high pressure sale at all. They really just wanted to make sure MAPCON provided exactly what we needed."

The Results

According to Muirhead, in 2015 they were congratulated by the auditors for making major improvements. They had only been using MAPCON for three months and had already made a measurable difference. Then, in 2016, they had a 100% accuracy rating, which was previously unheard of for the city.

The relationship between MAPCON and Garden City has grown by leaps and bounds over the past few months. In fact, Garden City was so impressed with MAPCON, their Warehouse Manager, Tyler Patterson, did a presentation at the company’s user group conference in 2017. The presentation detailed how MAPCON helped them pass the audits, as well as how it helped them organize their warehouse in a newer, more efficient way.

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