From paper work orders to dashboards built in plain language

Pac Basic gets custom packaging from order to dock in 1 day

Pac Basic runs out of a 45,000 square foot facility in Eleva, Wisconsin. Every job is built to a customer's spec, and the turnaround is tight.

“It's not uncommon for us to get an order at 4:00 o'clock on a Tuesday afternoon, and our customer will have product a day later on their dock.” Mindy Pedersen, Owner

That pace only works when everyone knows where every job and every sheet of material is. For years, the team made it work anyway.

Explosive growth outran a rigid legacy ERP

The problem wasn't the people. Pac Basic kept growing, and the system they'd used for years didn't grow with them.

“As we continue to experience explosive growth, we remained with the familiarity of an antiquated ERP. It wasn't able to be nimble.” Mindy Pedersen, Owner

Where the ERP fell short, the floor filled the gaps by hand. PJ Heggemeier, floor manager, runs production, shipping and receiving, and the schedule.

“Sometimes we would use Google Sheets or we'd have stuff written down on paper. But it was a lot of memory.” PJ Heggemeier, Plant Manager

Before moving to a larger facility, Pac Basic operated across more than one facility. Before Sutton, the only way to know what was sitting in another building was to go look.

“We had blue manufacturing orders flying around in trucks and between facilities, and I would have our production manager come to me and say, 'Hey, do we have any product at this other warehouse? Let me drive over there and check.'” Andrew Pedersen, Purchasing & Inventory

Switching ERPs mid-growth is a risk, and the Pac Basic team knew that going into it. The team wasn't shopping for a bigger version of what they had. They wanted something that could keep adapting. Mindy wanted the software to fit a custom business, and she wanted people behind it.

Live inventory in Sutton replaced drive-over stock checks

With Sutton, Pac Basic tracks inventory live across facilities and moves stock between them with a record of what went where. The drive-over-and-check trips stopped.

“Sutton gave us the ability to see all of our inventory live and use that information between facilities, and we can transfer and track what went where.” Andrew Pedersen, Purchasing & Inventory

On the floor, the paper trail is gone too.

Andrew builds production dashboards by describing them in Studio

This is where Pac Basic's story goes past a new ERP. Sutton's studio connects AI to the company's own production data, so Andrew can build views that didn't exist yet by describing them in plain language.

He built a dashboard that shows each machine's routing and groups upcoming work by material. He didn't write code or file a ticket. He described the problem.

He compares it to working next to someone who already knows the business.

“It's like having a professional alongside of you that has access to all of your data.” Andrew Pedersen, Purchasing & Inventory

Purchasing at a custom shop means one missed order can stall tomorrow's job. Andrew carried that for years. With live inventory and dashboards he built himself, he sees what's coming before it becomes a problem. For Mindy, the change shows up across the whole operation.

“You can see a job from start to finish, from order entry to ship date, and everything is tracked.” Mindy Pedersen, Owner

The reason the team chose Sutton is the same reason they expect to stay.

“Sutton is changing with us, and they're adapting to this new age of AI. I can be confident knowing that my relationship with Sutton is gonna last, and I know that there is a system that's going to grow and morph as we change as a company.” Andrew Pedersen, Purchasing & Inventory