Taken from Manufacturing Computer Solutions - February 2005
Congratulations from Rent IT to Freeman & Proctor
Rent-IT Systems UK would like to congratulate the staff at Freeman and Proctor, who managed to achieve a complete MRP installation in only 19 days. Guy Amoroso, managing director of Rent-IT, says: "Freeman and Proctor were able to achieve this because they understood their overall business target and realised where their previous MRP system was falling short. Once they had identified that 123mrp.NET would meet their requirements they had sponsorship from the top down. This is paramount. They were also able to do this in such a short time span because of the minimal training requirements for 12 3 MRP, and the fact that they could install the system themselves."
Guy Amoroso and Phil Boffin with the Highly Commended Award
- 123mrp.NET removes the obstacles to, and eliminates the common concerns with, introducing an effective manufacturing system. These usually include:
- Will we put more into the system than we get out?
- Can we afford so much time away on training?
- Must we commit to a large outlay with no assurance?
- Does it have to take so long to be up and running?
- Can existing staff really handle this?
- What if we fail to get the system to work for us?
The system is suitable for virtually all industries, with customers in electronics, automotive, textiles, joinery, food; water, oil and defence, to name but a few.
123mrp.NET, itself designed to minimise the disruption, uncertainty and risk normally associated with implementing a production management system, is complemented by a foolproof adoption approach, known as RiskGuard. It eliminates the need for a time-consuming and expensive procurement process - meetings, surveys, visits, presentations, proposal reviews and contract negotiations - with no certainty that at the end of it the right product choice has been made from conflicting functionality and cost/benefit claims.
Companies can attend one of Rent-IT's free evaluation workshops to see whether the product is suitable for their businesses. Once this has been established they can arrange training and sign up to receive the software straight away. 123mrp.NET's pricing is simple and straightforward, with a low per-license fee charged monthly. Users can increase or decrease the number of licenses in use on a monthly basis, or walk away at any time. Rent-IT runs free evaluation workshops regularly across the country: see our website.
Lowest cost, yet highest value
When faced with a £30,000 ERP upgrade bill for its ERP, Nuneaton-based pipe and assemblies manufacturer Freeman & Proctor, which serves the aerospace and automotive sector, chose instead to go for a rented MRP software offering. Says commercial manager Phil Boffm: "123mrp.NET was the first system we looked at. It did everything we wanted and there was no massive up-front cost. Also, the speed at which we were able to implement the system ourselves was impressive. We were live in under four weeks."
And this isn't simple MRP. F&P holds IS09000 and several manufacturers' accreditations. To maintain than upgrading these it previously had to run time consuming paper-based tracking. Says Boffin: "As an example, an Aston Martin of £1,240 two-strut set might consist of 24 parts. Each part would have its own job card, which on the reverse would have batch traceability details, and in turn the quality control card would carry information relating to all of the part job cards.
"123mrp.NETs picking list contains all of this information. We are currently writing reports to produce labels to replace the manual processes, and I expect to reduce the average picking process for an order of this type from 20-30 minutes to less than five."
The potential for error has also been greatly reduced. Boffm: "The old system was quite forgiving when you were entering data; however this would have a rather unforgiving knock-on effect. For example, it was easy to end up in a negative stock situation, which would only be discovered a month later, taking hours to resolve.
"123mrp.NET enforces data integrity up front. Also, it is intuitive - especially with the wizards and shortcuts. This is especially important for customers' schedules... They can span a year or more, where virtually every line item can change from month to month. "
123mrp.NET has been instrumental in reducing the lead time throughout all departments; from order entry, planning, right through to invoicing. For example, we noticed an immediate improvement in the way we can despatch and invoice our customers. Previously, one despatch note would require one invoice. If we take the rollover kit for the World Rally Car, which comprises 60 items, this might be delivered in several drops.
"With 123mrp.NET this can appear on a single invoice. As a result we are generating at least 100 invoices less per month. And with data entry across all departments also seeing improvements of around 50, this is saving us several man-hours in each department per month. We estimate overall lead time reductions of between 10 and 20." Add that to the system's real-time analytics capabilities, and Boffin reckons he's also effectively getting considerably more capacity from existing resources.