Capturing knowledge for prototype production

Next year we intend to integrate more systems with production management, using our intranet and the Access database – specifically maintenance and engineering design. Maintenance will mean we can see information about planned machine work and average frequency of downtime when we're planning resource allocation. CAD integration will mean operators on the shopfloor can see documentation about what they're building electronically." So says Stephen Charlton, technical development manger at Coventry Prototype Panels (CPP), an engineering company in Coventry that's almost entirely people-based and works exclusively with prototype automotive projects, sheet-metal components and low volume production. Done properly, the CAD integration could also ease front-end estimating and quoting – by providing links to real numbers on the system to qualify experience – and also smooth the path of confirmed orders into data for engineering and works orders. CPP has been going for 10 years: you're looking at a company of around 120 skilled people who design and manufacture for customers like Rolls Royce, Aston Martin, Jaguar, Cosworth and Mitsubishi. The firm is currently developing the whole body shell for the £150,000 Spyker aluminium hand-made sports car, plus production components for the Gibbs Aquada amphibious car. Making production key It's an impressive company with equally impressive capabilities and thinking. Apart from assembly and build areas, able to look after anything from radiator grilles and bonnets to complete cars, its factory has an inspection unit that can handle full vehicle assemblies, with CMM (computerised measuring machines) linked to the CAD database system. What's more, all that is now managed on a Sage Line 100 ERP and accounts system extended and integrated with sector-specific production software in the form of Prodman 3i from local Sage VAR Colbek Systems – CPP having upgraded from Line 50 accounts and spreadsheet and paper processes for production management last year. Charlton says the firm selected Colbek not only because it was the local Sage VAR but because of Prodman. "It was designed by automotive engineers that understand the problems of prototype production," he says. "Problems like resource allocation [when most of your resource is people not machines], job tracking, BoM [bill of materials] management, costing, stock management and invoice control." On resource allocation, he notes that people can become ill, have different skill levels and so on. "So we can't use finite capacity scheduling. Also, since it's mostly prototype work, you might not know precisely how long specific operations are going to take." So the system has to be flexible. It also has to cater for job outsourcing for work to be done, for example, by the many specialist CNC machining companies and the like in the Coventry area. And it needs to store data for scheduling jobs that do turn into regular production work. All that is now covered. As for job tracking and live project costing, that's all done via shopfloor data capture (SFDC), with barcodes on works orders, and operators scanning themselves on and off jobs and keying in hours. Charlton indicates that, again because of the prototype nature of much of the work, the firm can't take progress tracking as far as it can on its production side: it couldn't use any system on its own to infer time to completion of a job, for example. But for CPP's low volume production, details around what process is being performed, or if it is finished, timesheets and the rest – that's all automated. Meanwhile, works order management is ideal for the environment. "You establish a prototype BoM, and then as changes are made, for the next works order issue you just copy across the BoM and routing information and change the details on the fly," says Charlton. That's all achieved through Prodman's Route Card Library, which stores all planning sheets and links to shopfloor documentation. "If you invoke a route card, you can simply key in the new quantity and it will associate to all the recorded data automatically," he says.