Verso Corporation is a leading North American producer of printing papers, specialty papers and pulp. Printing papers are used primarily in commercial printing, media and marketing applications, including magazines, catalogs, books, direct mail, corporate collateral and retail inserts. Specialty papers are used primarily in label and converting, flexible packaging and technical paper applications.

Headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee, with a business center in Miamisburg, Ohio, Verso operates eight mills strategically located in Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin, with a total annual production capacity of approximately 3.6 million tons of paper.

Verso decided to replace its existing inflexible mainframe system, which relies on batch processing for reports, with a robust system that provides timely information. The importance of tight integration of suppliers and the need to share up-to-date delivery information with all stakeholders required Verso to:

• Better track the pulp and saw logs annually, involving multiple vendors and multi-staged contracts
• Have instant and direct access to and from multiple local and remote users
• Integrate with their SAP ERP system

LIMS, WieghWiz and LabWiz were installed and configured to meet Verso’s requirements.

LIMS tracks all inventory and manages all business rules (e.g. contracts, bonus calculations, taxes, etc.). The table-based configuration in LIMS client-server system provides flexibility to adjust business rules, change weight to volume using conversion factors, update vendor information, add or edit lots and species. Cost, production, delivery and payment information is available to all users in real time.

Project

3LOG Systems Inc. successfully completed this project in less than a year: a two-month GAP analysis was followed by an eight-month implementation and configuration period. 3LOG exceeded Verso’s expectations through the process.

Results

3LOG provides Verso with an integrated inventory management system. LIMS is a suite of operational and financial applications, which can easily integrate with Verso’s external systems such as its financial software and GIS. LIMS provides Verso with:

• Log Harvest Production Analysis
• Log Cost Analysis
• Contractor and Vendor Payments (including advance and reconciliation)
• Automated stumpage reporting and payment
• Log Inventory Control
• Log Sale and Transfer Management

Jenny Pezewski (Lake States Wood Supply accounting Manager) commented, “Utilizing 3LOG’s truck analyzer at the weighscale we are able to identify unusual loads immediately and in situations such as when a truck axle is not on the scale we can proactively correct the problem.”

Benefits

• Operation managers, foresters, marketers and accountants are able to run scenarios and create custom reports to analyze data and make informed decisions.
• Ongoing and one-time costs such as road construction are managed as needed.