MRP software increases workflow efficiencies

From providing accurate quotes and delivery times to creating data to help develop the business in the long term, Cogsdill said the implementation of Factorymaster has delivered measurable benefits.

Cogsdill develops and builds tooling solutions for the manufacturing industry.

The company has operating units in both the US and the UK, which produce tools that are available from more than 100 distributors in 30 countries.

The UK operation, based in Nuneaton, has a turnover in excess of GBP4m and employs 48 people.

Although the Nuneaton operation is still producing off-the-shelf products, the business has developed considerably and almost 80 per cent of its sales are for bespoke products.

As the company's focus changed, it became apparent that critical functionality was missing from Cogsdill's incumbent materials resource planning (MRP) solution.

In order for its bespoke products to be competitively priced, Cogsdill required accurate delivery dates and build costs.

However, its existing MRP solution, a Dos-based system, was not capable of providing a cohesive overview of Cogsdill's entire manufacturing operation.

Even though it was easy enough to extract information out of the system, it was extremely difficult to analyse the information to see where efficiencies could be improved.

In addition, Cogsdill was unable to provide customers detailed information on the progression of their order without someone physically stepping out onto the shop floor and manually checking.

Other processes such as order purchasing were also reliant on manual, time-consuming processes.

Cogsdill required a solution that would easily integrate into its existing business and one that would grow with the company.

It short-listed three products to review.

To ensure that no area of the operation was overlooked when evaluating the products, the company set up a committee of three power users to review the products alongside the management team.

After reviewing all three products, Cogsdill noticed a difference in the way the application of the products were applied in real-life situations.

Factorymaster had the most relevance to Cogsdill's own application and the company could immediately see lot of potential improvements to the business.

In addition, Cogsdill felt that Factorymaster was a company that it could continue to work closely with in future developments.

Implementation of Factorymaster started in September 2006 and by March 2007 the system was fully up and running.

The initial and ongoing success of the project is partially due to the power user committee set up during the evaluation process, which improved user acceptance of the system.

Automation within order purchasing has reduced the workload from 1.5 bodies to just 0.5.

Integrating the sales and purchasing functionality has helped improve the accuracy of lead times and delivery.

Increased management and automation of creation and management of bills of materials has improved accuracy and there are fewer mistakes over manual input of costs.

Touch screens introduced throughout the workshops allow the company to record actual process times accurately, removing the use of estimates and helping to improve costs.

This provides visibility as to where the product is within the manufacturing process and highlights any downtime on a specific job.

In addition, the company now has one year of reliable data that can be analysed to further improve business processes.

Ultimately, Cogsdill said that Factorymaster has enabled it to be proactive with its customers, helping them to build customer loyalty through improved service delivery and more competitive pricing.

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