A century-old commercial dishwasher manufacturer replaced an end-of-life ERP with Microsoft Dynamics AX, implemented by Sunrise across its U.S. and Canadian divisions.
Champion Industries is a midsize manufacturer of commercial dishwashers, glass washers, and related products, sold through a direct sales channel to hospitals, schools, restaurants, and correctional facilities. Headquartered in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, with a second division in Ontario, Canada, Champion is a subsidiary of the Ali Group, an international commercial foodservice equipment company based in Milan, Italy. With more than a hundred years in the business, Champion has earned its reputation as “The Dishwashing Machine Specialists,” engineering and manufacturing both stock and custom equipment — from compact glasswashers to complex flight machines capable of cleaning and sanitizing up to 20,000 wares per hour.
Customer: Champion Industries, a subsidiary of the Ali Group
Industry: Discrete manufacturing
Regions: United States and Canada
Products and services:
Microsoft Dynamics AX (finance, manufacturing, and supply chain management)
Champion ran its finance, manufacturing, and supply chain on an aging ERP — Business Planning and Control System (BPCS), first implemented in 1989 — that had reached the end of its lifecycle. When the company that licensed the product went bankrupt, reliable support became both costly and hard to find, and the risk to the business grew:
Risk mitigation became the primary driver behind Champion’s search for a successor.
After evaluating more than 30 solutions, Champion chose to replace BPCS with Microsoft Dynamics AX, selecting Sunrise Technologies — a local Microsoft Gold Certified Partner — to deploy and support it. Sunrise led go-lives across both of Champion’s divisions, in Winston-Salem and Ontario, and Champion later upgraded the system to extend its investment. The solution delivered:
On Microsoft Dynamics AX, Champion enters and processes sales orders 60 percent faster, saving employee hours and related costs. The move also unified the business on one platform across its U.S. and Canadian divisions, with results including:
“We had to find a product that we could rely on. We wanted to make sure we found and implemented an ERP system that had a good future. We believe that Microsoft Dynamics AX is the most cost effective, full featured ERP system in the market today and successfully installed it at two sites in the United States and Canada. We have an outstanding partnership with Sunrise and continue to work together to fine tune Microsoft Dynamics AX for greater return on our investment.”