U.S. Pipe streamlines CapEx, offboarding, and more
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Before Nutrient Workflow, U.S. Pipe’s processes were manual and slow. Nutrient Workflow was able to scale throughout multiple locations and provide a centralized solution, taking U.S. Pipe’s original need for automation from capital expenditure to other departments, such as IT, HR, supply chain, and safety. The result is improved overall communication throughout the organization.
Background
Incorporated in 1899 as United States Cast Iron Pipe and Foundry Company, the organization was formed by merging 12 businesses from eight states. Since then, U.S. Pipe has continued to acquire companies and expand its operations, becoming the largest domestic producer of ductile iron pipe, which is superior in strength to cast iron. The company was the first in the industry to use ductile iron exclusively for all its pressure pipe and fittings.
U.S. Pipe continues to lead the industry through the principles the company was established on more than 100 years ago: innovation, service, and quality. But what really sets U.S. Pipe apart isn’t just its pipe. It’s all the other superior products offered to serve the water and wastewater industry. From restrained joints to welded outlets and fittings, U.S. Pipe has been providing dependable and economical solutions for its customers since its inception.
Finding a better way
At a certain point, finding a workflow management solution that could be deployed and managed with internal resources became a priority for the company. After reviewing several workflow management vendors, U.S. Pipe chose Nutrient Workflow in July 2013.
“The ability to create and manage our workflows without a lot of third-party help was very attractive. It was easy to learn by diving right into the program.”
Initially, U.S. Pipe had been using a manual capital expenditure requisition process that was unwieldy and slow. Once the CapEx workflow was rolled out and running, use of Nutrient Workflow began to grow into other departments and functions, including IT, HR, supply chain, and safety.
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Making safety reporting easier
To help automate the safety program, Ebner worked with stakeholders from U.S. Pipe’s Alabama Works plants to come up with a system for handling safety incident reporting on the floor. “We were looking to create a workflow that was both effective and efficient,” he shared. “If a safety incident were to occur in the plant, any supervisor can use our internal intranet site to report an incident by completing a short form from their desk.” Based on workflow rules, safety incidents are logged and emailed out to relevant managers throughout the company who need to be informed.
Connecting all locations
Managing disparate locations around the country presents unique challenges, and consistency and scalability of standardized processes can be very difficult. However, Nutrient Workflow is helping U.S. Pipe not just standardize its processes, but automate those critical processes to keep things moving throughout the organization.
“We liked the environment and the support options available with Nutrient Workflow.”
Today, all of U.S. Pipe’s locations use Nutrient Workflow in some capacity, including for CapEx requests and employee offboarding processes.
Bringing in a workflow management solution like Nutrient Workflow has improved communication throughout U.S. Pipe. “Sometimes, just talking through the processes and getting everyone involved as you go along helps people see the bigger picture,” Ebner said. “People know what they do, but they don’t always think about the other people involved in a process and how it all ties together.”
With a wide variety of workflow processes already built, U.S. Pipe sees many more to come thanks to the scalability, flexibility, and ease of use of the Nutrient Workflow solution.
