Mount Airy, NC · Yadkin Valley · Surry County
A part-time CIO for Mount Airy, NC hosiery mills.
Hosiery mills, a granite quarry, and the shops that serve Mayberry visitors, near the Virginia line in Surry County.
Systems common in this market. The figure is city population.
The market
What Mount Airy looks like from here.
Mount Airy is in Surry County, just south of the Virginia line where US 52 meets the foothills. The town is known as the hometown of Andy Griffith and the model for Mayberry, and visitors fill Main Street through most of the year. Just outside town, one of the largest open-face granite quarries in the world ships stone across the country. Hosiery and sock mills have operated in Mount Airy for generations, and some still run at scale.
Mills here sell to national retailers that expect electronic orders, labels, and shipping notices on their own schedules. Orders arrive through a retailer's portal, the plant runs on an older ERP system, and inventory is checked against a spreadsheet. The applications assessment maps how those systems connect and where staff key the same order twice. A base dashboard then shows orders, inventory, and shipments together in the company's own Microsoft cloud account. Wineries in the Yadkin Valley and shops in Dobson and Pilot Mountain face smaller versions of the same reporting problem.
What we would expect to find here. Retail orders at a Mount Airy mill are often keyed twice, once from the portal and again into the ERP system. The assessment finds where, and the dashboard reads both.
Keyed once from the portal
Hosiery and sock mills have operated here for generations, and a large open-face granite quarry ships stone from just outside town. Mills sell to national retailers that expect electronic orders, labels, and shipping notices on the retailer's own schedule.
Orders arrive through a portal, the plant runs on an older ERP system, and inventory is checked against a spreadsheet. Base dashboard deployment shows orders, inventory, and shipments together after the assessment finds where staff key the same order twice.
Mount Airy is a service area, not an office. One team, based in North Carolina, works in your own systems.
Where this has run
A profile close to this setup.
Reporting was three exports reconciled by hand.
Light manufacturer · ~120 staff
The company had a capable IT firm, but no one was directing its work.
Regional wholesale distributor · ~90 staff
Industries in Mount Airy
Who we work with here.
Start here
- Applications assessment — Assessment
- Base dashboard deployment — Deployment
- AI Use Policy — Advisory review
Where we work
Around Mount Airy and across NC.
Where are you based and do you work remotely?
Third Shift Group LLC is based in North Carolina and works with firms across North and South Carolina. Most of the work runs remotely, against your Microsoft cloud account and your systems. Policy meetings and leadership sessions can be on site where that helps. See where we work for the regions and towns we cover.
Our ERP system is twenty years old. Can a dashboard still read it?
Often it can. Older systems usually keep their data in a database or can export it on a schedule. The applications assessment checks yours and states what it can support before any reporting is built, so you learn the answer before paying for the dashboard.
Where are retail orders keyed twice?
Once from the retailer portal and again into the older ERP system. The assessment finds those spots. Inventory checked on a spreadsheet is the third list in the same flow.
Can a hosiery mill and a stone supplier use one approach?
They can use the same order of work when both have a portal or a customer schedule, an ERP system, and a spreadsheet. The quarry's shipping notices and the mill's retailer orders are different files. Dobson and Pilot Mountain see smaller versions of the reporting gap.
Start here
The first step is the same in every location.
Advisory first, in Mount Airy as everywhere else: a written assessment you own.