March 2022

Move to Cloud Strategy Summary for Marketing

Delaying the delivery of an equipment order due to a missing label ruins everyone’s day. That is why at Muir Omni Graphics, we cultivate our information technology as carefully as we innovate our product development and manage our quality.

Our IT systems are a critical component of our product delivery workflow and are a major part of our continuous improvement program. We have frequently improved and upgraded our IT capabilities since the early days when we first began automating the integration of sales orders and shipping documents via EDI (Electronic document Interchange). Our IT systems today exchange literally thousands of EDI documents each day as part of our ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system. Our ERP system continuously optimally allocates Kanban inventory, production jobs, and purchase-order supplies to customer orders and forecasts. Virtually every person in our organization interacts with the ERP in real time. It is the central nervous system of our business. This allows us to deliver hundreds of important parts everyday with accuracy metrics.

Muir Omni Graphics has partnered with two IT consulting and service firms. Peoria-based IT360, is a Managed Services Provider who provides a wide range of IT support services. TradeGear, LLC., is an ERP software consultancy providing software solutions to manufacturing firms. Muir has partnered with these firms to ensure we appropriately leverage the benefits of cloud technology while maintaining simplicity, viability, and long-term manageability.

There are four factors driving our move to the cloud.

Security

Cloud vendors have constructed datacenters across the world with physical and digital security systems that rival Fort Knox and the Pentagon. Within any reasonable budget no mid-sized company could recreate the security provided by the top cloud providers.

Availability

Many of the investments made in security simultaneously yield high availability of cloud resources. We host our main production cloud resources in Google’s US-Central regional datacenters, and continually replicate data to a redundant set of cloud resources within Google’s US-Eastern regional datacenters. If the Central datacenter resources become unavailable, we quickly reconnect to the same resources in the Eastern region and continue working. This gives us geo-diversity that previously only huge companies could attain.

Simplification

When the ERP workload increases, adding power to an existing physical server typically involves weeks of hardware compatibility and availability planning, capital cost purchasing, hours of shutdown and risky physical modification. The cloud is different. We no longer have physical servers to worry about. When we require an upgrade for a cloud-hosted server, the upgrade is like placing an order on Amazon. We plan for a five-minute outage, select the increased CPU, memory, or disk storage quantities from a user-friendly online menu, click “go”, and restart the server. When it reboots, the server has access to the increased resources. This allows us to spend more of our efforts improving the products we deliver to you.

Performance

A direct comparison of a cloud server to an existing physical server shows that when processing Muir’s ERP workload, a cloud server with half the CPU and Memory (RAM) processes 108 percent of the work as the physical server.

Placing high-quality products in your hands is more than just excellent product development, production, and quality management. It also involves managing the logistical information that ensures you get what you order delivered when you specify. Our IT systems are continually updated to leverage technology advances that are appropriate for meeting the needs of your business.

At Muir Omni Graphics, leveraging cloud technologies allows us to focus our energy on improving the products we deliver to you.


Introducing Zund

In recent years, new printing equipment has been added. Most recently, a new cutting equipment was added to help expand our cutting capacity.

  • Able to cut up to 8 holes per second
  • No longer limited to round corners or square cuts
  • Emulates the exact shape of your product which gives us the result of your exact product dimensions

 


Year of the Tiger

As we bid farewell to the Ox, we’re excited to welcome the Tiger. Ready to embrace the resilience and strength carried by the Tiger, at MUIR Omni Graphics we celebrate the Lunar New Year. We continue to stay strong.


Employee Spotlight

Bryan Barney

I work as the Lead CNC Operator at Muir Omni Graphics. I started working in August of 1990 through my co-op class at Limestone High School. My graphic arts teacher, Richard Baylor, knew Don and Andrew Muir and referred me. I started out doing simple work wherever needed. Over the last 32 years with the company, I have been cross-trained for most of our production processes and also worked several years in shipping. Since 2008, I’ve been working in our Digital Cutting Department and have grown along with the company to figure out the best ways to get new and old jobs done.

My responsibilities include cutting jobs on the CNC cutters and maintaining the machines, sheet small part jobs off rolls on the Fotoba, provide training for any new Operators and help when needed. My favorite thing about my job would be the fact that I am always learning new things and new ways to do existing jobs. With my position at Muir, I get to learn with the latest and greatest equipment in our field of work.

Outside of work, I enjoy spending time with my family and friends and going places in my Jeep. I have also participated in billiards competitions, APA National Team Championship, Las Vegas 2009. Most people also don’t know that I used to be in rodeos as a heeler in team roping.

My favorite quote would have to be “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”

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