Bendalls Engineering, a division of CARR'S Engineering, was founded in 1894 and designs and manufactures specialist steel fabrications and assembles electro-mechanical equipment for a wide range of industries. For example, its experience of the petrochemical industry spans many continents. Project destinations, for products from Pressure Vessels to Gas Scrubbers, run from Azerbaijan and China to the United States of America.

While its clients include most of the major global players in the industry, equally, the company has supplied the nuclear industry for over 45 years, and is now an approved supplier to British Nuclear Group. Most recently, it was appointed as Lead Supplier to the BNFL Sellafield Site for the supply of machined and steel fabricated spares.

Before: the requirement...

In meeting the requirements of these customers, the first clear distinction between how Bendalls operates and that of a typical manufacturing operation, is that design and engineering input is almost always the starting point for every order. As a result, its internal management processes and systems have to operate within an environment where there is very little in the way of  standard products or even subassemblies, no Bill of Materials (BOM), no forecasting of demand, no standard costs, no buying in materials in advance, and so on.

Similarly, for mass producers, the production focus is on managing and improving processes, to control and improve costs, lead-time and quality. While Bendalls, as with all ETO companies, needs to focus on every aspect of each job, in order to keep costs within budget, to meet set delivery dates, and to ensure quality - for products that need to remain safe and reliable in the most hostile of environments - is never compromised. In fact, key operational differences run throughout the businesses even down to dispatch and invoicing, where detailed documentation packages have to be put together for each product and approved by the customer.

...and after: implementation and usage

Unlike an earlier business system that failed to take account of these operational differences, the key to the successful introduction and ongoing development of SYSPRO ERP system from Manchester-based K3 is that it has proven flexible enough to logically and effectively encompass the way the ETO business has to operate - from quote to invoice - and provide the management support the company needs.

As soon as an order is received, SYSPRO creates a job number and job file, without the need for a BOM. From this point, all the important information and documents relating to the job are made accessible through this file.

For instance, the company has developed its own estimating system for pressure vessels, and these quotes are now easily fed directly into the ERP system and held within the appropriate job file for ongoing reference. 

Also, once an order is won, the company's first task is to produce production drawings, within the in-house CAD system. However, while these drawings are still being produced, engineering can now provide access to an incomplete parts list of long lead-time materials and components through the job file. This enables the buyers to immediately start to work off this list, raising orders against the job number. Once the production drawings are complete and approved by the customer, these along with the final part list are then also made directly accessible to everyone through hyperlinks within the job file.

Further, as soon as bought in items are received, checked and passed by inspection, the test certificates are cross-referenced within the file to the published parts list. Similarly, final product inspection and certification details are recorded within the job file.  This helps to ensure complete traceability of materials, components and work throughout the production process.

As Murray observes, "Since the introduction of the SYSPRO system, jobs are just so much better "hung together" as regards to everyone having easy access to information they need, when they need it."

Crucially, tracking individual job costs and progress on a daily basis, if necessary, is also an easy task. The system's WIP module allocates costs to individual jobs, with labour entered manually from daily timesheets, and material costs set against the jobs as soon as items leave inspection. From this data, the company now produces a weekly modified report that shows the total cost build up of each job to date (hours worked and materials in), along with the cost of committed materials.  The report also includes the original estimate, and this enables ongoing reconciliation of actual cost against estimate.

"Previously, cost information was just not accessible in a format that was readily useable. Essentially, single job reports were just not possible, and it was a case of accessing all labour costs and material costs and manually cross referencing them. A very time consuming and error prone approach," explains Murray.

Additional benefits

The integrated nature of the SYSPRO system offers a ream of general benefits, which the engineering department has become increasingly keen to exploit. For example, accessing the WIP module allows engineers to look at current jobs, to monitor stores inventory and track supplier lead times. While the purchasing module provides engineers with immediate access to the order history related to a specific job, or supplier. Also, the department has found that the ability to easily access report summaries, and transfer these into MS word or PDF format, is extremely useful for providing clients with progress reports and suppliers with expediting reports.

The system has also brought new disciplines, such as the inputting of information at the right time, to key activities. For example, previously, orders would be placed with agreed suppliers, but without getting a proper price. The practice was to update the files later.  Now, not only does this poor practice become widely visible, but the resulting incorrect build up of costs - and its detrimental impact across the business - is far better recognised and understood. As a result, those personnel involved in this activity now maintain a much stricter system discipline.

"In the past the excuse was always that people were too busy to do it properly. Yet it is now obvious that when tasks are done properly and the set disciplines followed, it actually saves time and effort," states Murray.

Final comment

As Murray concludes, "The SYSPRO ERP system has been proven in meeting our specific needs. Everyone has immediate status visibility on every job, from order to final invoice, and a raft of detailed general information and key analysis data is available within seconds. At the same time, we have seen improvements in the way we operate, in every department. Overall, we are not only managing individual jobs more effectively and efficiently, but the system has made managing the whole operation far simpler and easier."