Bright future for KAG Luminaire with real-time scheduling

Commercial lighting louvres and reflectors designer and manufacturer KAG Luminaire reckons it’s going to significantly cut costs while also supporting its current 50% annual growth rate on the back of a new production management system. The Bradford firm, which employs just 20, is implementing £21,500 worth of Made2Manage ERP and, using the software vendor’s ‘Time2Value’ rapid implementation methodology, has configured its own its initial system to replace a bespoke quoting, costing and sales order and material management system that had run out of steam. Director David Butler says he’s delighted with progress so far: “Already we are using sales orders, quoting, BOM and job sheets.” Next, he says he’ll be using Macroscope, M2M’s implementation and services partner, to manage training and consultancy for Phase Two – shop floor data collection, multi-dimensional inventory and the financials. Butler makes the point that for a manufacturer at the small end of SME, flexibility and speed are critical to growth and indeed survival. “KAG has grown by 50% in the last two years. If we are going to maintain our track record for on-time deliveries and customer satisfaction as we carry on growing, we must have a system that can handle constant change and [provide] absolute control of the shop floor.” And that’s already happening. “Live reporting of actual versus planned materials and labour numbers, and the ability to handle both finite and infinite scheduling, ensure that we anticipate demand and workflow. It also means we can more accurately predict the effect of order changes and last minute jobs.” Which is important since the firm not only designs- and makes-to-order but also, for around 50% of its orders, has to guarantee rapid turnaround, sometimes in days. The system had to be capable of instant access to accurate information on each job covering actual materials, labour costs and machine and man utilisation. Butler: “With all our growth we’ve got to know exactly what is profitable and what is not. The shopfloor data collection modules and hardware will facilitate this, and with 60% of our costs being aluminium coil we’ll use Made2Manage to help us cut our material costs… In our business this means the difference between profitable growth and stagnation.” For the future KAG has further plans for the system – harnessing some of its more sophisticated capabilities, such as cycle counting, managing quality initiatives and helping it to reach ISO 9002, handling revisions, serial lot tracking and the multi-dimensional inventory aspects.