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The WinMan Application at A K Industries
Technology Category
- Functional Applications - Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP)
- Functional Applications - Remote Monitoring & Control Systems
Applicable Industries
- Automotive
- Consumer Goods
Applicable Functions
- Quality Assurance
- Warehouse & Inventory Management
Use Cases
- Inventory Management
- Predictive Maintenance
- Process Control & Optimization
- Supply Chain Visibility
Services
- Software Design & Engineering Services
- System Integration
- Training
The Challenge
Replacing the outdated Infor system written in Germany and used at AKI for the past seven years, a new WinMan ERP system went live at A K Industries on 6th April 2010. It is intended to take the company up to the stage of a fully integrated manufacturing management, accounting, estimating and customer relationship management (CRM) system – the last-named broadened out to 'company relationship management'. The Infor system revolved around cumbersome manual data entry, not real-time data as provided by WinMan. The existing Mattec realtime process monitoring system was linked with Infor indirectly via ASCII, whereas WinMan pulls data straight from Mattec to WinMan and pushes it from WinMan to Mattec. The Mattec system is connected to all of the 30 injection moulding machines on the shopfloor at A K Industries. WinMan does the planning via MRP ('what materials in what quantities are needed to meet customer demand') whilst Mattec performs scheduling, collects the data and sends it back to WinMan, for instance showing how many good and bad mouldings have been produced.
About The Customer
Based at Rotherwas, Hereford, A K Industries Ltd (AKI) provides technically demanding, custom injection-moulded component and sub-assembly solutions to more than 50 industries. 75% of AKI’s employees are engaged in production functions, in the 20,000 sq ft air-conditioned manufacturing hall on a 40,000 sq ft total site with 30 injection moulding machines from 6 to 450 tonnes clamping force, plus a broad spectrum of robotic handling, ancillary and assembly equipment. Annual turnover exceeds £5 million.
The Solution
The new WinMan ERP system went live at A K Industries on 6th April 2010. It is intended to take the company up to the stage of a fully integrated manufacturing management, accounting, estimating and customer relationship management (CRM) system. The CRM system comprises all external contacts – customers, prospects, suppliers, subcontractors and competitors: it is a central storehouse or repository for information, receiving all documents, reports and communications such as emails and faxes, with PC security passwords allocated in-company for viewing rights. Then this data may be exported to spreadsheets, briefing dossiers and so forth. WinMan takes account of tooling configurations or 'instances', showing for example which cavities in a multi-cavity tool may need to be blanked off for a required production level, with the attendant cycle time, material requirement, sprue, etc, being stored against the 'instance' rather than the tool. In this, WinMan takes account of tool change times and tool life, flags up their maintenance intervals and works out overall costs far more accurately.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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