Product category:
ERP and MRP software
News Release from: Exel Computer Systems | Subject: EFACS ERP IT
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial
Team on 27 September 2005
Continuous improvement, ERP, saves GBP
160,000
Continuous improvement at Dunlop Aerospace Fluid Dynamics saved the firm around GBP 160,000 last year in direct costs alone in factory floor operations, through lean and Six Sigma projects.
Continuous improvement is a way of life at Dunlop Aerospace Fluid Dynamics (DAFD), saving the firm around GBP 160,000 last year in direct costs alone That is in factory floor operations, through lean and Six Sigma projects, and in product and production tracking, engineering configuration and improving supply chain operations - with the firm's ERP system as the hub tying it all together
This article was originally published on Manufacturingtalk on 26 Nov 2007 at 8.00am (UK)
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The UK company, formed this year out of Dunlop Equipment in Coventry, Serek Aviation in Birmingham and Stuart Warner Southwind in the US, serves the aerospace engine market, mostly on the civil side.
Coventry, makes mostly solenoid-controlled bleed valves and associated equipment, while Birmingham manufacturers tubular heat exchangers, and the US, plate and fin exchangers.
Customers include the likes of Rolls-Royce, GE, Pratt and Whitney and Snecma.
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Each of the sites is involved in aspects of design, manufacture, assembly, test, sales and service - and each produces a considerable current product range as well as spares for older products in service for up to 40 years for its airline maintenance customers.
So these are fairly complex businesses, Kevin Donnelly, supply chain manager at DAFD in Coventry, says there are some 12,000 line items at his site - and all of the usual issues around managing and tracking quite a mix of production, as well as test, aerospace standards certification, packaging, the supply chain and so on.
Also, like any other company involved in manufacturing today, the firm is under constant pressure to cut costs and lead times to remain competitive.
And hence the emphasis on its continuous improvement programmes.
Looking at Coventry, it is a mix of precision CNC machining centres and conventional machines, with two main logical cells organised by product type and customer, and around 60 operators.
One of the cells essentially builds to OEM requirements, the other is geared for spares, although there are cells within the cells and flexibility to respond to demand.
It was not always like this: manufacturing used to be spread around older machines with multiple operations and a lot of material movements.
"Now we take the billet and do rough machining on a turning centre, then finish off on a machining centre." And that is with small batches and regular changeovers to keep inventory and associated costs and clutter down, and flexibility high - resulting in significant improvement." * Slashed lead times the results are impressive - "Lead times for one of our highest volume bleed valve bodies, for example, have fallen from 12 weeks to 14 days, mostly through investment in the machine shop, but also through our continuous improvement initiatives and the foundation IT - getting the information we need visible around the shop floor and the business." says Donnelly.
ERP - Exel EFACS at the Coventry site - has absolutely been part of this.
"When we set up Dunlop Equipment in 1994 we knew we needed an integrated system from day one," says Donnelly.
And it is this integration that has helped to support many of the firm's initiatives - that and the fact that the IT itself has undergone development, allowing different approaches to sharing information, and making it real time and accurate.
It is worth taking a moment to look at how DAFD has managed improvement of its ERP.
Back in the mid-90s the company was on v3.32 under Unix, running with DejaWin dumb terminals on the shop floor and Windows front ends in the offices.
Modules in use included most of the suite, from sales order processing, through inventory management, to MRP, capacity planning, job scheduling, product configuration, production engineering, goods in, despatch and financials.
An early good decision was virtually no bespoke code in the core system, the company instead tailoring its business processes to a large extent around EFACS.
Paul Hutchings, applications engineer, says that made subsequent upgrades far easier than it otherwise might have been.
He also says that, with EFACS' then basis in Microsoft technologies, add-ons like more flexible reports through Crystal and applications to support the factory improvement programmes, were also easy, essentially using Visual Basic and Access.
This year though, when the firm needed to move up a level in terms of server capacity, user numbers and technology, it used its improvement methodologies on the system too, says Hutchings: "We got the shell of the new system (EFACS v8.21) into the test area and got the users to look at it and see how many of our bespoke applications they actually still needed in view of the functionality now in EFACS.
It was a useful audit.
In fact we needed very little." And the result was a smooth transfer, with minimal system retraining, and an ERP system that again will be easy to keep on the upgrade path and relatively inexpensive to maintain.
* Shop floor to supply chain - but Dunlop also took the opportunity of implementing a new system to 'beef up' (strengthen) its shop floor terminals and facilitate further factory development.
Hutchings again: "We used to have dumb terminals on the shop floor for EFACS: now we have got PCs and printers, and we are running additional applications." The list is long: statistical process control reports, corrective actions forms and reports and tools management all run on the shop floor PCs, the latter with vendor-managed inventory (VMI) which alone has hugely cut costs and improved usage.
Those PCs are now the factory management hubs, also providing works order and route cards, material tracing, product serialisation and sign-off, all through EFACS.
Altogether, the company has removed a substantial amount of paper and manual processes, saving many thousands of pounds.
Moving on to replenishment, the Coventry site now runs kanbans (via email and fax) for most materials, trigger being in front of the machines.
The result of that alone was raw materials inventory halved in just 18 months, with now a virtually empty warehouse area, saving valuable time, resource and money.
Higher value and longer lead-time components, however, are managed conventionally through EFACS MPS (master production scheduling) and MRP for purchase schedules, while the system also populates an Access database for suppliers to see longer range detailed requirements.
The objective is to synchronise arrival of outsourced materials as tightly as possible at the assembly area with the in-house manufactured components, while also providing a mechanism to improve suppliers' visibility for planning.
DAFD is also looking at developing a web-based supply chain system to take that further by giving suppliers visibility of changing requirements as they happen - and then sharing in the cost savings A front end portal system, ideally from Exel, is going to be the way to go, with XML connectivity and functionality to support the various suppliers' systems and sophistication.
"There will be benefit in doing this," says Donnelly.
"Even our small suppliers have the Internet and email, and they are crying out for visibility." As for internal capacity and production planning, MRP currently runs twice weekly, with detailed scheduling done on the back of that at the cell level via the office PCs, using EFACS MPS and generating work-to lists.
But that is set to change.
"We are looking at running MRP daily," says Hutchings, "Not for production, but so that despatch can get better visibility of what is due out in priority order so we can improve customer service using the data we already hold in ERP." Meanwhile, on the customer side DAFD has long term visibility of order requirements from its OEM's we-based systems, which show schedules and exception reports.
Currently, cell leaders re-key changes weekly into EFACs' for the MPS and MRP explosion to drive purchasing and factory loading, but that too will change very soon.
"We have got plans to integrate that with EFACS," says Hutchings, "Using XML to directly populate our schedules." So much for all that; looking at new product development and change control, although there are no direct links between the firm's Unigraphics engineering system and EFACS ERP, production engineers work on both sides of the fence and have access to both systems.
It works: formal processes ensure that, for example, drawings issue coincides with bill of materials (BoM) release, and routing and tooling updates on EFACS.
However, that again is up for review.
"We have a new site engineering manager who is currently looking at continuous improvement for the controls around new product introduction and the data links between engineering and production," says Donnelly.
And you can see the thinking - getting Unigraphics data to populate the manufacturing BoM in EFACS direct, and to generate manufacturing instructions and documentation and the rest semi-automatically, will reduce admin, improve accuracy and understanding, and save cost around engineering and manufacturing change.
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