Mould maker ramps up efficiency with shopfloor software

Sektam president Chris Moore explains that the firm manufactures injection and blow moulds for industries ranging from automotive to sports, and employs just 12 skilled people, often running 20 jobs concurrently. Before installing MyWorkPlan software, he used to produce all documentation to run the factory. "I was tired of writing quotes, recording jobs in a log book, creating invoices, and managing times on the back of job cards," he says. Hence MyWorkPlan, which he describes as "really cool, and ideally suited to the one off work we do". Moore says it copes with the range of projects, which include those where tools are delivered the same day, to more complex mould builds, which can take eight to 10 weeks. "I can now produce a quotation in less than 30 minutes, which is a reduction of about one hour per job. Over a year it saves three months work, giving me more time to get extra business," comments Moore. "As well as automatically creating the sales order, MyWorkPlan produces an order confirmation for the customer and prints out the notes for the job, which go in a book on the shopfloor for our engineers," he explains. Then on the shopfloor, engineers log onto each job, so that time spent is automatically recorded. "I can now find the hours spent on a job with one mouse click. That way, if we are running near to or over the allotted hours I can go down to the shopfloor to see if there is a problem. "[the software] makes us work smarter. It has improved our customer relations – accurate information is available instantly and we now produce professional looking documentation."