Customer
Haigh Engineering is a family owned business established in 1955. It currently has a turnover of £7m and employs 110 people. Operating in the wastewater treatment industry, Haigh designs, manufactures and installs products such as screening and dewatering systems for waste water plants.

Requirement
Haigh has a constantly changing portfolio supported by product evolution and is currently managing a period of rapid growth.

The company already believes strongly in new technology and has invested substantially in the latest laser cutting, robot welding and CNC machinery, as well as in a state-of-the-art CAD system.

Constant innovation requires the control systems to support their manufacturing processes, delivering more capacity and enabling them to make more products to meet the increasing demands of their customers.

Solution
EFACS business solution

Supplier
Exel Computer Systems
www.exel.co.uk

Results
"EFACS has brought cohesion to our central process," according to Haigh's Manufacturing Manager, David Brown. Their CAD system now links with a seamless interface to the EFACs business solution and they use the Product Configurator heavily, finding that it delivers them a real competitive edge. "Although stock holding has not been driven down, lead times have certainly been reduced," he adds. To date, Capacity Planning has not yet been utilised with EFACS, but David anticipates that this will make a real impact at Haigh.

Comment
"We like the fact that Exel is author of the product," Brown concludes. "We feel that because they are creating and developing a product, as we are, there is a synergy between the two companies."

Customer
UK aerospace company APPH Ltd. has a turnover of circa $100 million and employs 480 staff. Its products include landing gear systems, flight controls and hydraulic system assemblies for both civil and military aircraft, and filtration equipment. The company's services cover initial concept, design, qualification, manufacture and lifetime programme support. APPH numbers the top aerospace companies in the world amongst its clients.

Requirement
APPH's Managing Director, David Haslam, states: "Our vision is to have state-of-the-art, integrated ERP and engineering systems across the group, with e-business links to our customers and suppliers on a global basis."

A sustained investment programme in computerised manufacturing management systems starting as early as 1989 and gradually spreading across different sites has the key objectives of reducing manufacturing lead times, increasing number of stock turns and cutting headcount and inventory.

Solution
MFW enterprise resource planning

Supplier
K3 Business Technology
www.k3btg.com

Results
APPH has so far implemented MFW Enterprise Resource Planning software in four of its eight sites in Britain and the US. The software handles the company's manufacturing requirements for both make-to-order for original equipment and make-to-stock for aircraft spares. APPH sites typically use MFW modules such as sales and purchase order processing, inventory, bills of materials, MRP and financials.

"The benefits of the system are numerous," says David Haslam. "You must work smarter when you implement new computer systems. MFW has helped to reduce manufacturing lead times, handle our material and parts traceability requirements and has contributed to increasing our sales per employee ratio. The control of inventory has been improved, resulting in lower inventory levels and increased turns"

Comment
"We chose MFW," says APPH Managing Director David Haslam, "because it met all our selection criteria. From our decision to buy until the final system implementation took six months, although we have almost halved this time with subsequent implementations at our other sites. Timescales have to be very aggressive otherwise you tend to forget the original objectives, key people leave the company and, generally, the impetus is lost."
He sums up the benefits of MFW in one sentence: "MFW is cost effective, user friendly, and has matched our system functionality expectations."

Customer
Utilities engineering consultancy MWH has engineered, constructed, financed and managed some of the largest and most technologically advanced projects in the world.  Previous projects have ranged from the development of one of the world's largest hydroelectric plants to the management and expansion of the infrastructure for one of Europe's largest water and wastewater utilities.

Requirement
MWH operates in a complex, document intensive industry, where the selection of the right solution for storing and accessing information is always going to be critical. Furthermore, the utility sector is heavily regulated, requiring players to be accountable at every project stage. As a programme manager, often handling over 500 inter-related projects, MWH is required to have access to data on every aspect of its work.

MWH proceeded to commission an effective document management system that would deliver:

Access to information that was both timely and accurate and the information needed to be seen in context to have maximum value.

Full operational value within a three-month period, with minimal distraction to the client or MWH

Flexibility in its design to evolve with changes in programme needs and the dynamics of the marketplace.

A sophisticated audit trail to tie-in with the organization's enterprise-wide risk management strategy.

Solution
kVisia software on the Documentum platform

Supplier
McLaren
www.mclarenkvisia.com

Results
Phase one of the project was installed, configured and deployed to the client within 13 weeks, a direct result of the highly configurable nature of McLaren's kVisia applications applied to the terminology and specific business rules of an organisation. 

"McLaren's kVisia based solution accelerated the rollout process, speeding time to benefit, whilst saving costs by substantially reducing the need for businesses to use consulting resources to deploy the solution," commented Paul Muir, CEO, of McLaren. "The system is very intuitive for employees, and puts low-cost, longer-term control of the solution firmly in the hands of the client. 

The MWH system now has 700 users who can view, redline and annotate almost 200 different document types without having the native applications loaded on their machines.

Comment
"One never knows which document will be the vital piece of information until somebody wants to see it," explains Mark Bottomley, Programme Manager at MWH. "By implementing an improved document management solution, we are exercising proper risk management.  The business case is not just about how much the system costs to implement and run, but also how much will it cost not to - if an issue arises on a project we need to be able to trace information relating to that issue."