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EEMU Engineering of Byfleet, Surrey, has recently installed PSL's DataTrack software (08456 345931) to run its business administration and production functions. EEMU manufactures and assembles aircraft products for airlines such as seat tables, panels and door louvres. "As we put together components and services from outside suppliers to create finished products, our processes need to be carefully project managed from start to finish," says Andy Allan, managing director of EEMU. "As an aerospace supplier, we needed a software package that would do this for us with minimal effort, so that we can devote time to running and expanding the business." COMPLETE CONTROL The DataTrack modules employed by EEMU provide complete control of the supply, manufacturing and assembly processes. The system produces a process layout (job sheet), and all parts and services bought in are recorded by DataTrack. In the case of high specification door louvres, this can cover the supply of frame parts, extrusions, bonding material, paint and services from outside suppliers. A works order is raised to cover the individual aspects of the manufacturing and assembly process, while the GRN (Goods Received Note) generates unique batch numbers that remain with the job until despatch, thereby providing full traceability. "DataTrack is indispensable to EEMU and I would recommend it to any company looking for a business administration system that provides complete control," says Mr Allan. PS Marsden of Nottingham has been continually assessing the manufacturing software market for a number of years. Image: EEMU's DataTrack software is described as "indispensible" to the company According to senior manager Mick Hall, the company had "frightened off" numerous potential vendors after they realised the complexities of PS Marsden's product mix, its wide-ranging suite of CNC machine tools, number of live jobs, and varying lead-times. However, following a demonstration of the Redant production control system, the company placed an order for a six-user system from GB Efficiency Services (0113 274 7161). Initially, the implementation concentrates on the core modules controlling stock, purchasing, quotes and job scheduling. However, moving forward, Mr Hall sees numerous efficiency benefits to be derived from the system. For instance, the integrated touch screen data collection and time-and-attendance system will enable the existing TAR system to be "retired", as well as ensuring accurate data recording and job progress feedback. The story of success is similar at Dorset-based sub-contractor Bridge Precision Engineering, which has recently installed Tricorn's Job Processing software (01252 821889). 600 PER CENT GROWTH In the past three years, the company has grown to meet the requirements of an expanding customer order book, increasing the company's annual turnover by more than 600 per cent. And yet, prior to implementing the Tricorn system, Bridge Precision managed work using basic Excel spreadsheets. "We had just begun to use job cards. However, a lot of the tracking was carried out verbally," says Tony Goodwin, managing director. "So a job would be booked in and go through the factory without a paper trail. Fundamental things, like materials pricing were, performed from memory, while the tracking of jobs involved asking those directly involved with the work. Each invoice that we sent out was manually created and, going from a book of 20,000 jobs, this workload took up three days of every working week." The software works as hoped, reports the company. "Gaining access to information, such as knowing where materials are sourced and costings, is simple. And, if we receive repeat work, it only takes a minute to copy a works order and modify it for the new job. Invoicing now only takes two-to-three hours, one day a week." Increasingly, even small, recently established sub-contract machine shops are turning to production control software. A case in point is CK Engineering of Northern Ireland, where managing director Derek Corbett claims that the Progressplus production control software from Berkeley Myles (0141 440 1987) has delivered a step change in the performance of his business, which was established in 2001. "We had previously used spreadsheet templates for stock control, purchase orders, shopfloor scheduling, delivery and invoice documentation," he says. "We considered a number of production control systems, but settled on Progressplus as it was easy to use and met our traceability requirements. All of our administrative processes are now streamlined into one solution that allows us to meet the demands of our client base who now prefer to receive documentation electronically." As a note of interest, Berkeley Miles is offering a £2,000 'scrappage allowance', if companies change their production control software system to Progressplus. The only requirement is that the existing system is a competitive product. Turning to recent product upgrades and releases, and the latest release (R3) of Planit's Jobshop (0116 272 5700) production planning and control system, for example, adds a number of new features, in addition to further developing existing functionality and improving usability. In this latest version, powerful document customisation allows key system documents to be defined for printing, emailing or PDF creation, either via the standard internal print format or a fully customisable document based on a Crystal Report template. The Crystal option adds new possibilities to the external documents feature, allowing system users to define the Jobshop data they require on the form, as well as format the document layout in any style. Image: PS Marsden's requirements had "frightened off" numerous companies – Redant successfully copes BETTER ESTIMATES Another new development in Jobshop R3 is aimed at helping estimators assess process times more efficiently, and with greater consistency and accuracy, by building the planned labour times from a toolkit of synthetics. Other recent releases include Gain4 Efficiency, from Gemba Solutions (02476 796615), which provides a baseline OEE figure for machines, lines or plants, and goes beyond this to report on availability, performance, downtime, rejects, maintenance stoppages, set-up times, speed, WIP and labour use. The software is scalable, in terms of both number of users and number of monitored cells/machines. Elsewhere, Lynq (01329 800000) has announced the launch of its Visual Planner production planning and scheduling software, which has been designed to integrate with Macola MRP software. The software allows the scheduling of work, both automatically and manually, on to each work centre or machine with an easy drag-and-drop function, or through multiple methods of automatic scheduling. With Visual Planner, the production planner can amend the working calendar for each work centre, so working hours can be adjusted to meet production needs on a day-by-day basis. Free Scheduler workshops Seiki Systems (01273 680411) is hosting a series of free Scheduler workshops that will provide an opportunity to see a full product demonstration and discuss requirements with product specialists. The dates are 24 September and 26 November at Tewkesbury, and 22 October at Brighton. The Workshops will run from 10:00 until 12:30. First published in Machinery September 2009