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A few examples...
A High Voltage Switch Manufacturer [non-conformance reporting]
The Challenge - Customer manually created Non-Conformance Reports and sent them to suppliers via Email or FAX. This required a lot of time and effort and a few reports didn't get sent.
The Solution - Coldwater Technology created and added a revamped NCR (non-conformance reporting) and QA (Quality Assurance) module to their existing ERP back-end. The solution is browser based and automatically sends NCR's to suppliers.
Results - The customer says that their Coldwater Solution, "provided a tremendous increase in throughput of the quality department and overall visibility / manageability is through the roof".
A Steel Fabricator [Shop Scheduling]
The Challenge - Production Planning is spending endless hours scheduling and loading the shop using antiquated Legacy software. Using reports and identifying jobs, planning then enters beginning and ending dates for each operation on a shop order. After reviewing hard copy reports they continue to process again, just to reschedule when priorities change.
The Solution - The Job Shop software used by this client associated multiple shop orders to reference a Job. Coldwater linked the Job and detailed Shop orders using a simple calendar allowing planners to highlight shop orders and load the shop. Planners see the number of orders planned and total hours loaded for a given day. With a moving 90 calendar planners see current and future shop loads balanced against capacity.
Results - Reschedules are less of a headache and load balancing the shop is a matter of a few clicks. The entire shop can be loaded in minutes with a calendar view that easily used to see bottlenecks and plan additional new business.
A Contract Manufacturer [Resource Management]
The Challenge - It's next to impossible to get engineering, drafters or design personnel to enter the time they spend on jobs to track true costs. Often times business system software treats these activities as indirect labor, but they're anything but. Analyzing the situation you must balance the time required to record activities versus the cost of those valuable human resources. You want your engineers working on solutions to customer and prospective customer requirements. Making sure you're getting the value for those activities will help balance your resource needs to your revenue expectations.
The Solution - Coldwater created a front end process that allows aggregated time recorded to multiple jobs and shop orders. An engineer, draftsperson or other human resource records total time for a day and selects shop orders by category or by range. The time is pro-rated against each line based on the total time (size) of the shop orders.
Results - Seemingly indirect time (engineering, drafting, other) is now recorded against individual jobs and shop orders without requiring individual labor entry or extensive recording of time by every employee. A more accurate reflection of job cost is now available and appropriate adjustments can be made in the estimating of future jobs.
A Fabrication Shop [Work Orders]
The Challenge - Creating work orders for standard parts is time consuming and generates more work than the actual production of the parts. There must be a way to track labor and overhead for a given part as opposed to individual work orders.
The Solution - Using a demand flow model (DFT) or raw in process (RIP) approach Coldwater implemented a set of user screens that allowed for production releases. These releases fed the back-end ERP system with production schedules and production posting. As the shop produced parts a simple entry against the schedule directed data into the ERP system against a shop schedule. This schedule aggregates the standard labor and overhead credits against labor posted by department
Results - The elimination of many work orders and individual postings saved thousands of dollars (each work order release was estimated to cost $80). Shop personnel were able to see the production schedule and merely posted what was produced. Inventory was updated in real-time and variances captured at the department level.
A High Voltage Switch Manufacturer [Work Orders]
The Challenge - The company releases hundreds of work orders every day to the shop. An employee would arrive early in the morning and sort the work orders by department. They would pull up the drawings [one at a time] print them and attach them to the work orders. This amounted to many hours per day for little value.
The Solution - Coldwater changed the work orders to print in department sequence. They created an interface that took that sorted file, matched the part with the drawing in a SQL table; Pulled the requested drawing size and orientation from a database; and Automatically printed the drawings in the order the work orders appeared.
Results - The company is saving 2 hours per day in preparing work orders. Coldwater automated their mundane, non-value added activities within their inefficient processes saving even more time. And, now their ERP is functioning as they like it.
A Steel Products Company [Managing Inventory]
The Challenge - It took this company 6 days to process their monthly inventory. They are using older enterprise software and were looking for a way to speed this up.
The Solution - They were able to get rid of the Excel sheets and totally use Coldwater's PAC Solution to input and analyze results. They had some minor program changes that allowed them to enter the counts instantaneously-instead of 45 seconds per entry!
Results - They immediately cut down the monthly inventory processing from 6 days to approximately 2 days, and along with other improvements, they are done by 5:00 p.m. the same day of inventory, and use approximately 1/2 day following inventory to recount and analyze before posting. She says that everybody has big smiles about that, because before it was an excruciatingly painful process!
A Contract Manufacturer [Purchasing]
The Challenge - The purchasing department was receiving requests from all departments in the form of email, voice messages, sticky notes and fast food napkins. The purchasing manager needed a way to standardize incoming requests to insure that no request was missed, that the requests were approved, the requestor was kept in the loop in regards to status, and the whole process was quick and easy.
The Solution - Coldwater created a browser-based Requisition system that is secure, fast and simple to use. Anyone, from the custodian to the president, can enter a request. These requests then travel up the predefined 'chain of command' for approvals and on to the purchasing department for review and automatic release to a purchase order. Along the way, automatic emails are generated notifying the original requestor of the status and those individuals that are required to act on the requisition. In addition, a full complement of real-time inquiries are used to track status of open requisitions and retrieve information on requisitions that have been previously released.
Results - Non-value add activities have been removed from their purchasing process allowing the people monitoring all of these activities to work on activities that produce revenue. Anyone in the company can easily track their purchase request. They have eliminated missing requisitions and now the requisitions move through the process in a timely fashion.
A Contract Manufacturer [Engineer to order]
The Challenge - Engineers were creating CAD drawings that included a detailed bill of material (BoM), which was not defined as database elements within the drawing package. Often times a single drawing would define multiple part numbers, each with a slightly different BoM. Once the drawing was completed, it would be forwarded on to a clerk would then have to manually enter the BoMs for each. This was time consuming and opened the door for entry errors.
The Solution - Coldwater developed a browser-based program that scans a CAD drawing, determines the contents of the BoMs and displays a preview of the BoMs. If a component within the preview data doesn't exist, the user is alerted by high-lights in the preview list. Once the preview list is accepted, the BoMs are automatically imported into the UNIX-based ERP system.
Results - The solution reduced entry time and error rates dramatically and it promoted adoption of a standardized format for the development of CAD drawings.
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