- Reduced lead times and inventory holdings
- Automatic flow from design to quotes to planning
- Dynamic stock control and work scheduling
- Configurator builds valid quotes
Integrated complex engineer to order
1 min read
Sheffield-based Edward Pryor produces permanent marking products, systems, software and services for non-paper materials – mostly metals, but in all sorts of applications. Recently, the firm has grown into high tech, specialist computer-controlled, machine-readable marking systems using laser, chemical etching, inkjet printing and 2D Data Matrix technologies for applications in, for example, aerospace.
"It really raised the stakes: we needed to build machines for global supply and provide support at the local level," says Neil Andrew, development director. "We needed a system that would be much more flexible and much more integrated." The goal was to efficiently manage all the aspects of selling, configuring, designing and building many variations on a theme – on time and on budget.
"For example, we wanted to be able to flow from constraint and resource management to quotations to automated planning when the enquiry turned into an order. That meant data management between our 3D and engineering systems and the production and business system. We also needed a much more dynamic stock control system and work scheduling program."
Enter Information Engineering and Syspro. Peter Rowlands, Edward Pryor's logistics manager, says that one of the attractions was its product configurator system for building quotes and entering orders with only valid, manufacturable combinations. Another was its planning engine, which would enable semi-finished modules to go to assembly just in time for marrying with custom parts and assemblies. "That would reduce time scales and inventory holdings."
On the APS side, Rowlands says: "We're a jobbing shop for both sides of the business – we flow standards and specials through production together. So the APS will give us visibility of WIP tied to customer orders so that we can plan optimally and react to customer demands intelligently."
But beyond that, he says: "We need to integrate CAD/CAM with Syspro via PDM [product data management], probably Smarteam. We want data integration of the BoMs, for example, so that once a machine has been designed in SolidWorks, the PDM system can bypass the old ways of designers... Using Smarteam we'll be able to simplify everything, eliminate errors and include consumables, manuals, electrical wiring and so on that's not obvious from the 3D model. And we also want the designers to be able to see the inventory we hold in Syspro and information about similar systems we've designed and built before – hence the PDM part."
Key benefits
