CommaTECH is a major component supplier to the aerospace, motorsport and specialist commercial industries. The original main operation, CommaTECH (Leicester), was formerly known as Cannon & Stokes. This is an established business with a 100-year history.
As UK SME manufacturers face ever increasing competitive pressures from home and overseas, one strategy for competing in a crowded marketplace is to eliminate archaic business and production IT systems. These not only waste significant time and effort, thereby reducing efficiency, but can place limits on what a company can achieve.
Precision engineering SME, CommaTECH has recognised the need for further investment in IT technology, along with employees and processes, to achieve a balanced approach and to avoid any limits to its ongoing growth potential. The firm's management are far from resting on the massive performance improvements, which has seen the company double its turnover to over £23 million over the past 18 months. Crucially, CommaTECH is adopting a balanced approach to these internal developments, which is now recognised as essential, and is investing in its people, processes and its IT technology.
Therefore, while the business's SYSPRO 6.0 ERP system, from McGuffie Brunton, has proven to be a key foundation to its present success, the management team believes there is far more potential for SYSPRO than has yet been realised. They are now further investing in their system, so that it can effectively support and help drive forward future growth.
Resurgent Business
Today, the North Evington based CommaTECH (Leicester) employs around 100 people, and focuses exclusively on precision engineering. Its core competencies are in producing seal housing assemblies, complex prismatic components and turned rings of up to a metre in diameter. It has built a reputation for producing components in exotic hard metals such as titanium and precision machining to tight tolerances. With the likes of major customers such as Rolls Royce, CommaTECH is a "strategic partner" rather than a "highly competent parts provider".
During 2005, CommaTECH acquired aerospace component supplier, DDi Precision, now CommaTECH (Hertford) and NH Precision Engineering, now CommaTECH (Northampton). 2006 has seen the further acquisition of O+S Gears, now CommaTECH Gears (Atherstone) and recently Braye Precision, now CommaTECH Braye. As a result of organic and acquisition growth, the Group's workforce will have expanded from 60-70 employees just two years ago, to an anticipated 500+ by the end of 2006.
Foundations for Success
While CommaTECH has been helped by significant growth in the aviation industry, the real key to the company's advance has been the revitalisation of the Leicester operation. This has been achieved by ensuring that its long standing reputation for technical competence is supported, while at the same time a strategic programme of major internal and business changes has been undertaken with the aim of improving both individual and operational performance. As John Taylor, the group's executive chairman and the driving force behind the internal improvements, claims, the recent success is due to the firm's ongoing investment in processes, people and technology.
The Leicester plant has run a fully integrated SYSPRO financial, manufacturing and distribution ERP system for a number of years. This system manages all the key processes from producing quotes and sales order processing, right through to financial management. Although, as Paul Hartshorn, the Group's IT manager reports, "The main emphasis to date has been on effectively controlling the shop floor."
The Leicester factory runs 24/7, 362 days per year, producing parts that often have lead times of between three to six months. The operation employs a broad sweep of system functionality to undertake production planning. This includes running MRP, scheduling the factory and reviewing machine cell loading; providing works order information, including the extremely complex and detailed production routing data that often has to be approved by customers and must be 'followed to the letter'; collecting detailed process information and monitoring work in progress via SFDC. Plus, managing the complete inspection process, keeping detailed records, and enable serial tracking.
In particular, notes Hartshorn, "Because product quality is such an essential factor in the company's offering, SYSPRO is used extensively to monitor and help control quality inspection activities throughout the factory, and ensure product traceability."
This is achieved through the ERP's Lot Traceability module, which enables the factory to easily record the constant quality inspections that tend to follow every operation. The same functionality also maintains a secure file of information that is gained from the entire manufacturing process. This means the company is well equipped to comply with the stringent demands of customers that every part supplied must have full traceability - all the way back through production (machines used, operators, inspection reports), to raw material supply. As Hartshorn adds, "The system provides exactly the right level of support in this area, meeting all our companys'requirements."
Continuous Improvement
Overall, SYSPRO has proved invaluable in terms of manufacturing visibility and control as CommaTECH continues to grow.
However, because the need to undertake continuous improvement covers every aspect of the business, the company has been looking at how it is using SYSPRO and what developments can be undertaken to improve efficiencies. "The Group's present management team understands that the system has far more potential to offer in supporting future growth. Not only is some of the existing ERP functionality being developed to be used more effectively, but new functionality, like EDI, is also being adopted," says Hartshorn.
A key area of development is with the company's order processing. As a result, CommaTECH is about to introduce an EDI linkup with one of its main aerospace customers. The majority of its work with one engine manufacturer is undertaken against a two-year advance schedule, with the required call-offs and order updates made available by the customer every two weeks. At present this information is downloaded from the customer's website, manually formatted as a csv file, and then keyed into SYSPRO. With EDI, the whole order entry and update process will become seamless, with the data from the website being automatically extracted and inputted into the ERP system. "EDI will not only save significant administrative effort and avoid typing errors, but will provide a significant step forward in reducing and improving the factory planning cycle," claims Hartshorn.
This is because of a two-week gap between receiving the initial schedule and then updating it with a cycle of order analysis, MRP, material requisition assessment and factory load leveling. CommaTECH will then respond to the aerospace customer to confirm, or highlight issues with the delivery requirements with any agreed revisions included in the next schedule update. Around 30% of this time is taken with inputting the new call offs. With EDI, the aim is to reduce this cycle to just one week, which should also help improve the whole planning process, as the loading and order book picture will be more up to date, not a week old, when analysis is undertaken.
To further improve the Leicester operation's production control, CommaTECH is also looking to add a dedicated planning and scheduling system, which will be integrated with SYSPRO. At present the load-leveling tool provides the facility to review the planned loading on each cell and to assess where potential overloads may occur. The new functionality will enable planners to actually analyse loading at the machine level and schedule work to individual machines, and so achieve more efficient schedules.
The operation already employs SFDC to track the passage of every product on and off machines and through the factory. But, future developments planned in this area include replacing the existing card based approach, whereby operators manually update job cards from which the information is then manually entered into SYSPRO, with a real time system that employs the machine tools to automatically report job start and completion times.
Management Reports are another key issue, where CommaTECH has yet to realise the full potential of SYSPRO. While the business produces a wide range of reports, these are still typically produced manually, requiring the re-keying of data.
However, progress is now being made on getting people to more effectively use the software's reporting capabilities to speed up the creation of financial, manufacturing and individual client reports. The company also hopes to use SYSPRO's document and version control facilities, as the system is highly secure, which is vitally important to protect technical documents for high-profile clients.
Wider Group Application
Finally, another major system development that is about to be completed is the roll out of SYSPRO into the two more recently acquired companies, and the linking of all the operations to the Group's Birmingham headquarters. "We expect the system, which is equivalent to that operated in Leicester, to go live in CommaTECH (Hertford) in the next few months, with Northampton following soon after," says Hartshorn.
This work has been seen as a critical as Hertford is still using a bespoke programme which dates back to 1981 to control the factory. While the financial side of the operation is equally poorly controlled through an old accounting package, which provides very little in the way of useful management data. As Hartshorn observes, "Group management has been keen to get SYSPRO operational so that they can start to not only gain a much greater level of control over Hertford's production, but also establish some financial visibility in order to better determine efficiencies, required staff levels, and plan ahead."
Once these implementations are complete, CommaTECH will then expand its existing VPN, to link each factory's SYSPRO system together into one network through the Group's head office in Birmingham. "The SYSPRO financials are already being used there to manage both the financial aspects of the Leicester plant and the overall business. The extended link will provide full visibility of all sites, enabling senior managers to assess what is going on within the business at any particular time," reports Hartshorn.
He concludes, "When CommaTECH first adopted SYSPRO, they were unaware of the full capability of the system. However, the present management team has a much clearer idea of the full potential for the software within the business. This is highlighted by the planned investments in the system that will take place over the next 12 months. These are seen as important steps in reducing lead times and waste, improving efficiency and delivering a better service to its expanding customer base."
