SSL WinMan

When rapid expansion of its manufacturing facility created a need for improved communication between sales, production and despatch, Visual Planet, innovators in visual messaging, invested in WinMan.NET, an enterprise resource planning system.   Visual Planet has customised the system so that business critical information is displayed on screens throughout its building and information updated in real time.

Technology Director Vernon Spencer explains that increased volumes of sales and sizes of orders prompted the decision to upgrade the management system.

"Visual Planet has experienced rapid growth over the last few years due to an international demand for our interactive touch foils.  These are manufactured in-house and then shipped all over the world for our partners to integrate into through-window touch applications or to overlay on LCD and rear projection screens," he comments.

"Developing these foils is a skilled operation and resource intensive, so we have trained up a dedicated team of staff that are only involved in the manufacturing process and have less awareness of the bigger picture.  This was creating communication issues as the sales team need timely information on order progress and capacity.

"We analysed the bottle-necks in the organisation and the solutions that were available and selected WinMan as it met our immediate requirements and could scale as we grow."

WinMan from SSLWinMan has an intuitive interface and provides full integration of stock management, relationship management, product traceability and workflow.  Additionally, being built completely on .NET technology, WinMan represented a prudent long-term investment by being future proof and also offering a secure development route.

The system automatically issues alerts and action requests at pre-determined process points for input from anywhere in the company which ensures that in a market where nothing less than the highest levels of quality are acceptable, every process step has to be completed and recorded.

Visual Planet has created internal communication systems for its clients in the manufacturing sector.  For example for GRAM Advanced Materials Ltd (GRAM), a wholly owned subsidiary of RICOH, it created a 'Visual Factory' which showed staff how their work was contributing to profitability.  This experience has meant that Visual Planet was able to integrate WinMan with its visual messaging technology.  As a result the system provides all staff with the information they need, when they need it, improving efficiency and productivity at all levels of the company.

Vernon concludes:

"We are delighted with the result.  The sales and production teams have commented that they can instantly see how their efforts are contributing to the success of the company and we now have a system that will grow with us."

The Magal group of companies has led the field in automotive engineering for more than 50 years. With UK manufacturing becoming more and more competitive, the combination of modern management techniques, lean practices and state-of-the-art technology have allowed Magal Engineering to remain at the forefront of the automotive industry. This success has been matched by aggressive business growth due to the consistent ability to acquire and then transform ailing companies into highly efficient and competitive entities within a very short space of time. The scale of Magal's achievements are even more impressive in light of the fact that each Magal company had a new ERP system - WinMan from SSL WinMan - implemented and running live within in a Lean manufacturing environment in a matter of weeks.

As Group IT Manager Martin Blackburn explains, the secret of consistent success has been a true team effort based on one key underlying philosophy. "Magal is committed to Lean. We don't just talk about Lean - we eat, drink and sleep Lean -and that's everyone from the shop floor to the Directors. Lean is our way of life and it drives everything within the business." Dave Downing, Logistics Manager Western Thomson Plastics, elaborates further. "Our philosophy applies to every company and is consistently applied because it has been proved in every Magal company. That means every company uses Kanbans, every company does its production in the same manner, and every company uses WinMan ERP."

Blackburn is a seasoned Manufacturing IT professional with many years experience of different ERP systems and implementations and has been involved in every WinMan deployment throughout the Magal group. A key member of the Magal Change Management team, he has some unique insights into what lies at the heart of achieving consistently quick and successful ERP implementations, especially within a Lean environment. "It's all too easy to see an ERP system as a solution in and of itself. Many of the companies Magal has acquired and transformed already had an incumbent ERP system and many times such systems were an integral part of the problem."

He cites the example of AP Drivelines which had an AS400 based ERP system before the Change Management team were deployed. "It was immediately obvious that the existing ERP system contained a lot of dross and was overly complex for what was required. When we migrated the information into WinMan, our ERP system of choice, we brought over 38,000 part numbers while the former system contained over 100,000. We consequently had to do a lot of data cleansing and even today, we still occasionally have to tweak the data." AP Drivelines therefore had by far the longest implementation time of any of the WinMan systems. Although as Blackburn says with a smile, "We still had them up and running live in only 4 months."

Speed of implementation however needs to be balanced with minimising negative impact on a company's ongoing business performance. Here again, WinMan has proved to be an invaluable asset, especially with reference to Magal company, Western Thomson Plastics. When Magal acquired the company, it was in a poor trading relation with its principle customer. The Change Management team needed to implement Lean and WinMan in a very short period of time yet with things as perilous as they were with regards to the customer, they couldn't afford to disrupt the daily running of the company. Blackburn reflects on this implementation, "We were taking a huge risk. You only need to drop the ball once with a major automotive customer and the next day you're out of business. However, we had WinMan up and running in only 3 weeks without upsetting the apple cart of the main customer."

It is this ability of WinMan to be implemented in such a reliably short time that helps keep it as an essential tool in the Magal Change Management toolkit. Downing explains some of the reasons why WinMan is able to achieve this. "The beauty of WinMan is that it is itself a Lean ERP system in that it is an extremely powerful manufacturing solution yet one that is very straightforward at its core and does exactly what it claims to be able to do." He recalls a time he and Blackburn spent 6 months simply trying to fully understand a more complex ERP system comprising 7000 programs in order to try and make it work more efficiently. "At the end of the day, it couldn't do what WinMan can do - all those extra bells and whistles just represented non value-add functionality, for which you were asked to pay dearly." Blackburn picks up this theme of powerful simplicity and contrasts it with his experiences of ERP other than WinMan. "We've seen systems in the past that required more operatives just to keep the data up to date than we had in the company. In such cases, the ERP system far from being a help actually becomes a huge hindrance."

WinMan is also able to be implemented in such a short time frame because it has been designed from the outset to be an accurate representation of real world, Lean driven manufacturing. One simple but extremely powerful example of this is WinMan's refusal to allow negative stock levels. As Downing dryly notes, "In business, you can't sell what you haven't made yet that's precisely the sort of logical laziness and ill discipline that most ERP systems allow. And if you allow that, then you lose any sense of confidence in your actual stock levels compared to your system stock levels." This has a direct bearing on how quickly a system can be implemented because Lean manufacturing necessitates absolute visibility and accuracy of stock levels. Once those using the system have complete and utter confidence that stock levels are consistently accurate, they can trust the system to do its job, which it does quickly and efficiently. Downing also notes the wider impact of working with false negatives. "What's more, with all of these false negative values floating in the system, how can you ever get an accurate accounting overview of where your company is at any given time?"

Because it mirrors real world Lean, WinMan is also very intuitive to use and therefore very easy to learn and this again helps significantly to reduce the implementation time. "I typically allow half a day for people to learn all the core functions they require", says Blackburn. He continues, "I also always ensure that they have their own data to learn with and that all training has a value-add to the person and company. If not, it's like any other non-value add process and should be dropped."

Which takes us back to the core centrality of Lean to Magal and once again, why WinMan proves to be such a consistently invaluable tool in Magal's Lean toolkit. "Two areas of functionality make it clear that WinMan was designed with Lean in mind" comments Blackburn, "the first of which is that it can operate on a true pull manufacturing basis. It understands that when I've used a widget, I need a new widget and everything pulls through from here." Downing interjects that even here WinMan's versatility is appreciated because it can also handle both backward and forward flushing within the same package. This is put to use successfully in AP Drivelines where production operates on a back flush basis whereas packaging needs to work on a forward flush basis.

The second key area of Lean functionality in WinMan is the ability to use Kanbans - specifically electronic Kanbans. This is what Blackburn describes as real-world Lean because in the example of AP Drivelines with over 30,000 part numbers, there are in excess of 3000 Kanbans in operation. "It would be literally impossible to manually manage Kanbans on this scale so they must be automated and controlled by the system. Because of WinMan's total accuracy in stock control, we can trust it not only to manage our Kanbans but also to dynamically resize the Kanbans according to forecast and load."

This is essential in an industry as notorious as the automotive industry for unpredictability not so much of what is required, but when. For example, an order may be received for 13,000 parts with a commitment to call off 5000 in week 6. According to Downing, the reality tends to be either calling off of 8,000 or none. By using these rocking Kanbans, Magal is able to keep an optimised balance between ensuring a constant supply of appropriate parts without having excessively high stock levels tied up in Work in Progress. Which as Downing accurately notes, is yet more waste that can and ought to be removed from the business.

This focus on real world Lean also permeates Magal's use of WinMan in terms of extending Lean out into the Supply Chain. The company is currently working on EDI links with appropriate suppliers and customers in order to extend its electronic Kanbans out via portals. Blackburn is quick to point out that the system has to work with the model and with reality. "The reality is that by the time you get to tier 2 and 3 suppliers, they don't have the capacity to work with EDI so you have to take this into account and adjust the ideal to fit the actual."

Even here, Magal uses WinMan in an innovative way which can be illustrated again by Western Thompson Plastics. Downing was successful in persuading all his key suppliers to place their stock in Western Thompson's stores and to treat it as consignment stock. In essence, WinMan then treats each stock area as one huge Kanban with individual bins called off according to need with the correct supplier paid accordingly at the end of each financial period As Downing says, "It's a win/win situation. It saves our smaller suppliers considerable time and expense in terms of multiple deliveries and it massively reduces our accounting activities while ensuring we always have stock availability which means in turn we always make our delivery dates." This also has the additional benefit of reducing the number of suppliers used by Magal and making these suppliers in turn feel a much more connected part of the team. All of which serves to increase trust, add to a positive working relationship and again remove wasted time in dealing with multiple suppliers.

Perhaps the greatest testament to the value that WinMan brings the Magal Group is that it has remained the ERP system of choice for over 5 years now and has been deployed in all  Magal UK companies. It is also imminently ready to be implemented in MagalTech, India and Blackburn sees no reason for WinMan not to remain an invaluable part of the Magal toolkit. He concludes, "With WinMan you know exactly what you are getting - it does what it says on the tin. And that is providing a true Lean enabling ERP system that is scalable, flexible and powerful enough to work equally as well in every Magal company. Whether dealing with 20 product lines or 5000 product lines, the absolute reliability of the information and the way it handles this information remains the same. It works perfectly with the Magal philosophy and by doing so, brings real added value to every company and the group as a whole."

Centurion Europe Ltd is a leading specialist supplier of tool, hardware and DIY products throughout the UK and the rest of the world. Based in a state-of-the-art distribution centre in Doncaster, the company has established itself as one of the UK's foremost ‘Trade only' distributors over its 27 year lifetime and now boasts a healthy turnover. When its aging business management system began to seriously impact its ability to maintain its all important customer service levels, Centurion Europe put its trust in WinMan from SSL WinMan.

Conceptually the business processes involved at Centurion Europe are relatively simple and straight forward. When an order is received, a pick-list is generated relative to that order and passed to a team of pickers. The completed order is then checked by a dedicated checking team and then packed and collated prior to dispatch via one of the 2 daily dispatch pickups. When stock levels fall below a certain level, the purchasing department orders in a pre-determined amount of product based on the previous 12 months demand.

The reality however is far from simple and largely driven by the sheer scale and variety of business that Centurion Europe handles. First there's the product range of 10 distinct categories covering approximately 25,000 items as diverse as doorknobs, chamois leathers, screws, mole grips, gardening gloves and wall dimmers. Then there's the variety in order size ranging from as little as £1, up to some orders in excess of £5-6,000 which might comprise thousands of different product lines. While the minimum carriage paid order value is £80, this could include an order line as small as 5 screws. Finally there's the sheer volume of business that the company does - approximately 4000 orders per month from a potential 7000+ customers worldwide.

Debi Miller is Centurion Europe's Customer Service Manager with over 20 years background experience in the joinery and hardware industry. She highlights some other difficulties the company faces. "Each of the product lines we supply ideally needs to be kept in stock in order to fulfil our average 48 hour delivery which means not only does every item have to have a specific stock location, we need to know stock levels of every product at all times." She continues, "Having so many product lines means dealing with and managing a huge array of suppliers, currently over 250. Some of these are local companies which can deliver small orders on a next day basis while others based in China or India have to be bought in bulk where the lead time is 6 months, give or take a month."

Then there are other peculiar quirks which add further complications such as the fact that some products may comprise a variety of individual components and require a degree of sub-assembly or pre-packing. An example of this would be a door latch assembly which requires not just the door latch mechanism but a number of screws of a specific size and type. Centurion Europe makes use of a pool of home-workers to accomplish this which means being able to trace and track every product or component dispatched from the company, to and from each home-worker, as well as adding time to the actual order. Finally there's the inevitability of human error be it in terms of confusing similar products and stock locations, especially when each individual stock location is further divided into a number of possible sub-locations.

No wonder therefore that Debi describes success being contingent on every single thing running smoothly and to plan. "The right product needs to be in the right location at the right time and in sufficient quantity. This means having complete accuracy and visibility of real time stock levels which in turn necessitates timely purchasing of stock and providing visibility of where ordered stock physically is and when it is scheduled to arrive. Lastly, it means being able to access and manage considerable amounts of data in order to quickly get at the information you need."

Prior to investing in WinMan, Centurion Europe had attempted to achieve all of this via a mix of manual processes and an aging Pegasus business management system. Orders would come in via fax, email, EDI or phone and then be manually entered onto the system. This would generate the pick-list which would then be issued to the picking team that would pick the goods after which they would be checked and then dispatched.

While the existing system undoubtedly assisted in some areas these increasingly became outweighed by the growing number of inherent flaws within the system itself as Debi explains. "At the heart of the problems lay a basic unreliability and a lack of visibility and control over what data was in the system. The system would crash or freeze at least once a day for no reason at all or over something as trivial as two people trying to enter an order at the same time."

She continues, "We also had a fundamental problem with the data actually in the system because there were some fundamentals it couldn't deal with which meant we were always having to update, amend or tweak the data so that it matched the actual reality of stock we had." She cites the above example of the door latch kit that required a set number of screws of a certain type explaining that the system couldn't automatically allocate the screws and latch to the correct product. In a similar way the system also couldn't handle multiple bins within single storage locations.

The greatest problem area however lay in the system's inability to handle incoming stock which meant that the company still had to rely on a colossal standalone spreadsheet to manage all of its purchasing activities. "Because this was separate from the Pegasus system, everything had to be updated manually and there was therefore a problematic time gap between stock being taken and stock being re-ordered. Even more problematic was the lack of visibility anywhere about what stock was on order and when it was due to arrive."

The combination of this was a growing and cumulative amount of time spent correcting and updating the data in the system and a decreasing trust in the accuracy of the data once it was in the system. Debi estimates at least an hour per day was spent simply correcting the data alone. And while the system's regular freezes only lasted 2-3 minutes, she points out that those minutes, "can feel like a lifetime if you're on the phone to a customer who's in a hurry and in the middle of an order. This could often result in the customer cancelling or reducing their order and certainly didn't help customer relations." Significant time was also spent trying to get meaningful information in terms of reports out of the system which again required additional verification to make sure it was correct.

Centurion Europe recognised that the only way to improve the situation was to invest in a modern, fully integrated ERP system that could actually deliver the power and potential to fully enable its own internal business processes. A comprehensive review of a range of alternatives began in mid 2006 and by the time Debi joined in December 2006, WinMan from SSL WinMan had already been selected because of its winning combination of functionality, flexibility and value for money.

Project implementation began in February 2007 with the Company assembling a comprehensive internal team comprised of departmental representatives with Debi in charge. This team worked closely with a dedicated SSL WinMan resource in reviewing every business process, identifying how each ideally ought to work and how WinMan would work in enabling this. Added to this was the need to set up all the incoming stock control mechanisms and data which involved cleansing and then transferring a lot of data held outside the system. Debi again, "We decided to work as much as possible with the standard system and customise only where we really needed it. Because everyone who was to use the system was actually trained in-house on the system using our own data, this went a long way to restoring basic trust in the ability of a computerised system to be reliable and accurate."

This approach is one the reasons why Debi believes the company had a successful and smooth go-live on June 1^st 2007. "We had preloaded the system with some live data just before the go-live so that from day 1, people could come and begin using WinMan, which they did and aside from a few minor system tweaks, everything ran smoothly with no disruption to the daily nature of the business."

So much so that the benefits of WinMan were literally experienced on the first day because it worked 100% reliably all day with no freezing. After this was repeated on the second, third, fourth and fifth day people began to trust and take for granted the integrity of WinMan which only added to the buy-in from the Centurion Europe staff. Trust in the accuracy of the data took a little longer to be fully established but Debi is keen to point out that this was entirely due to people's experience with the previous system. "There was still a lot of double checking, just in case, but time and time again the data in WinMan proved to be accurate. In a very real sense the system proved itself to us and gained our trust in the process."

Not only was the data now accurate, it is also much, much easier to access and turn into meaningful information. Unlike with the former system, the company can now see vitally important information such as daily sales in real time simply at the touch of a button. Not only that, but with this and any of the other reports that were simply impossible to generate previously, staff have the ability to drill down into specific areas of data. The way that the WinMan user interface is set up also means that each user has instant access to all the information they need in order to do their job quickly and efficiently. And because it is all operating in real time, stock levels and order progress information remain dependable.

This combined with complete system visibility of accurate information has enabled Centurion Europe to improve its existing business processes in a number of key areas across the entire company. For example, the Warehouse Manager previously had to wait until the following day in order to be able to receive a system generated update on what had been the current state of stock across the warehouse at the close of business. Now she is able to interrogate the system live and in real time whenever required which is essential for managing not only current stock levels but also timing and scheduling incoming deliveries. Even the mobile Sales Teams have benefited because WinMan allows the company to track and monitor sales via individual reps which in turn enables the company to reward and motivate its sales force accordingly.

The ability to manage purchasing also made an immediate impact because as soon as replenishment levels are reached, re-orders can be automatically actioned with that information available to the sales staff. Visibility on the progress of re-orders enables sales staff to sell with confidence products that may actually be out of stock but scheduled to arrive prior to the dispatch time of the order. The ability to run MRP to accurately generate sub-assembly requirements as in the door latch example, to batch these optimally and to update all individual component stock levels also contributes to the company's ability to reduce overall stock levels yet still maintain optimum delivery times with an average 75% stock turnover.

While the inaccuracy of the previous system data makes quantifiable benefits hard to ascertain, Debi comments that some measurable time and resource savings have been established. "We have been able to handle an increased volume of sales simply due to the time savings and efficiency of WinMan. For example, we've eradicated the need for all the 5 minute phone calls to suppliers to double check the status of an order or those trips into the warehouse to manually double check the availability of a product." Ultimately however it's the customer that receives the greatest benefit. WinMan is credited with increasing the company's ‘in stock all the time' level to an all time record of 97% and enabling 95% of all orders to be supplied in full within 48 hours with 60% of those within 24 hours. "Now when a customer is on the phone, we have all the information available immediately at our fingertips and if there's a problem, we know about it before hand and can proactively keep the customer informed."

As for the future, Centurion Europe is shortly to begin the second phase in its WinMan implementation which will involve integrating its labelling system into WinMan and adding EDI capabilities in order to streamline dealings with large retailers. The company is also looking to move to using hand held scanners, at first for goods in and then for picking. Plans to implement the WinMan Customer and Supplier portals and a shopping cart facility are also being finalised.