Brian

It’s (nearly) never too late

Features
2 mins read

Working capital is coming down sharply at £37m injection moulded plastic parts supplier Birkby's Plastics in Liversage, since go-live of a QAD eB2 enterprise system in February last year across all three of its business units. Moving more to consignment stock alone will take out £100,000, according to Steve Harrison, Birkby's quality and systems director.

It's a good start, and more will follow, but one of the key lessons here is the importance of keeping on top of your upgrades, systems and infrastructure. Birkby's is 75% in the automotive sector, making a mixed bag of automotive trims and interior plastic parts, like dashboards, seating parts, power steering vessels, pressure vessels, accelerator pedals etc. The rest, Business Electronics, sells into the computer and office industry. The firm underwent an MBO in April 2003, and the management team spent the first few months turning the company around. "In April 2003, upgrading our system wasn't at the top of the list of priorities," says Harrison. But it wasn't long before it was. Birkby's QAD MfgPro ERP system at v8.5e from 1998 was going out of support, and the server, a Dec Alpha on Citrix, was virtually full. In October it fell over. "We had a sophisticated mirror, but with one disk full, the other couldn't support us… It made us realise how vital the system is." The decision to upgrade to QAD eB2 was made in November 2003 and, with speed the name of the game, the company found its hands forced for implementation date and type. "As far as the business was concerned, there were only two viable options for go-live," says Harrison. "The first was February, the other October: February because it would give us a clear month before filing management accounts after the first year of our MBO. But if not then, there were other issues in May, June and July which would impact development, trialling and testing. We knew we couldn't risk waiting that long." As for type of implementation, Birkby's might have gone for QAD's 'value' upgrade, with not only new hardware and software, but re-engineered and modernised business processes. However, again because of time being tight, it had to opt for a straight technology upgrade, with mostly only new hardware and software. All was quickly done, and key improvements include updated financial processes, streamlined and simplified international business transactions, provision of a new web-based desktop interface and the potential to support Birkby's lean manufacturing and supply chain initiatives. "Lean is a big area for us," says Harrison. "Using kanban systems, fast track changes, single piece flow and 5S, for example, we're now supplying to Toyota, and shipping 14 times a day with very low levels of inventory." Key benefits
  • £100,000-plus working capital improvement
  • Improved business controls
  • Updated financial processes
  • Streamlined multi-national business transactions
  • Provided web-based desktop
  • Support for lean manufacturing and supply chain