Production control system does so much more

In just two years since buying into contract manufacturer RTP Engineering, managing director David Farrow is predicting turnover up from £350,000 to £1 million next year. He backs his prediction by the reality of two years meteoric growth already, taking turnover to £750,000 last year, and what’s interesting here is how he’s done it. The keys seem to be his total determination and dedication to customer service and doing a good job profitably, and underpinning that with the structure and speed that comes from an appropriate integrated production and business management system. RTP is a general ‘total resource’ engineering firm in a range of industries. It designs and builds a variety of special purpose machines and equipment for clients in any number of quantities and across a diverse range of materials. At its 6,000sqft site in Kenilworth, it has 15 people and a range of machines – from a brand new Hass VF2 SE CNC four axis machining centre, which joins two others, to CNC lathes and machines for turning, milling, grinding, boring and inspection on a recently acquired Mitutoyo CMM. The issue for any company like this is not just ensuring you can sweat the assets, although that’s key. It’s also all about being flexible – using engineering know-how and juggling projects according to need, capacity, scope, numbers and capability – and making it work through fast, accurate estimating and quoting, planning, scheduling and business and people feedback and controls. And that’s where automated electronic production management IT comes in. Farrow says he’s absolutely a systems man, having come through engineering all his working life, and makes the point that without a system, achieving workable flexibility and making profit is going to be “bloody hard work”. And hence his choice, shortly after joining RTP, of a production and business control system designed for SMEs – Manusoft. “As well as machining high-precision products for established clients such as the Williams Formula One Team, we also make special purpose machines for a variety of clients for medical applications, thermal transfer copper coiling machines, as well as accommodating urgent jobs which require an extremely fast turn-around,” he explains. “We needed a system that would help us maintain our high-quality service, while at the same time enabling us to take on more work. With our previous manual system this just wasn’t possible. That’s why we invested in Manusoft.” In fact, the system was purchased with the assistance of a grant from the Business Link ‘Accelerate’ regional supply chain-led business programme, administered by the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, which provided £20,000 of funding for the £60,000 project. Accelerate offers business development and capital grants, supply chain improvement programmes and specialist centres, with grants available for all sorts of improvement initiatives specifically including implementing IT systems to help with supply chain problems. The system went live in April last year, and within three months was delivering the looked for results as more jobs went on. In addition to scheduling production automatically, it’s being used to provide customers with quotations, identify areas of wastage, ensure customer deliveries are made on time, and to help RTP achieve ISO 9001/2000 before the end of 2003 by supporting all of its existing systems. It’s linked to a Sage accounting system, but even the invoicing is done from Manusoft. Farrow says it’s used for everything. At the top level it gives the complete business overview, but it goes right down to the detail level of planning projects for production, estimating and quoting, as well as real time scheduling of work through the shop floor, with electronic works orders and the rest. Importantly, at the shop floor level he says that, being screen-based, it also provides operatives with more detail of the production processes required so that errors too are reduced and training issues highlighted. “On planning and estimating, for example, with the system we can manage the custom work and as it ramps up, call up the records of how we produced it and re-organise for greatest efficiency through the factory taking into account capacity at the time, sequences and so on.” Equally, he says that having visibility of capacity in the future as well as profitability in the past helps the firm target appropriate business and customers. “It helps us find the customers we want – where we get most profit. We can call off any job, revamp it, look at the profit and make changes.” Farrow says it’s certainly been instrumental in supporting the business growth, both in productivity and profitability. “By, for example, grouping similar types of work together, we’ve reduced set-ups, that sort of thing. I’d say we’re at least 25% more productive now, and profitability has doubled in the last two years now we’ve got the system in place.” Looking at other benefits, Farrow says: “We have increased our engineering staff from eight to 13 and reduced our office admin down to just two, including me! By raising efficiency levels, the system has helped us to increase profitability, allowing us to continue expanding our operation.” And putting meat on those bones, he says the system has, for example, helped him reduce the ‘safety nets’ of finished product, while aiding decision making around shipping components for external manufacturing processes like plating or heat treatment for maximum financial efficiency. Lead times have also been reduced – he estimates down to four weeks from around six to eight weeks, with the system providing the visibility again to make decisions around internal and subcontracted production. “Without control you cannot achieve growth, but you also have to have flexibility and we have been able to achieve that with Manusoft. We have achieved faster throughput of work, reduced lead times and improved our job predictions which are now around 95% accurate.” And that’s important in an era when customers don’t have their own safety nets: the market expectation – and supplier performance measure – is on-time delivery. He also suggests that the system is now being used to direct continuous improvement. “We’re using it to production engineer the in-between tasks – how we move material around the shop, tooling and fixturing, so that it’s as slick as possible. We want to keep the machines cutting metal.”