|
 |
Need for Flexibility and Rapid Response
Building blocks and paving are heavy commodities which are expensive to transport and need careful planning for delivery. Order requirements and delivery times can change at short notice. Flexibility and immediate response are therefore crucial to success in the production and distribution of concrete products.
Plasmor’s target is to fulfill any customer order within a three day lead time. To do this efficiently, the company must manufacture to stock. Whilst this gives the company a competitive edge, such a strategy needs careful management to ensure that it can be maintained without carrying excessive levels of inventory.
As an expanding company, Plasmor now has eight production plants all located within strategic marketing regions. So far IT had been used within Plasmor to support sales order processing and distribution. Financial Director, Keith Knaggs comments, “We were an early convert to the idea of using computers to provide competitive advantage, particularly in delivery performance.” To improve this capability further and provide greater flexibility, the company implemented IFS Applications. An important benefit of the new system is that the sales department can allocate stock from any of the production units to meet order commitments. As well as improving customer service, this also ensures that the company achieves the most efficient use of its production facilities.
|
|
About Plasmor
Plasmor is one of the UK’s top six suppliers of concrete walling and paving products. The company headquarters in Knottingley, Yorkshire, U.K., is located on the original quarry site where the business was founded by the present chairman, Antony Slater in 1959.
Benefits
|
|
|
IFS Offered Opportunities for Growth
“Since our computer hardware was nearing the end of its life, it was decided in 2002 to upgrade to a unified ERP system. Now operational across the group, the new software runs on a central server and a networked PC/thin client environment, using robust and low-maintenance equipment,” explains Plasmor’s project leader, Deborah Smith.
ERP provides much wider business support by integrating all of the traditional management functions, such as financials, payroll and human resources with other functions such as sales order processing and manufacturing. For Plasmor the upgrade has made an immediate impact as previously all production planning, recording and control was based entirely on manual records.
Sales orders and distribution as well as two production units are managed from headquarters in Knottingley. Says Deborah Smith, “In order to manage the additional capacity we needed facilities to help us marshal deliveries and plan the most appropriate supply point for a particular order, a degree of flexibility which the previous system lacked.”
From an ERP point of view the manufacturing process is relatively simple. Since it is a continuous process, materials requirements are geared to stock orders rather than make-to-order. The important element was the integration with sales order processing in order to exploit fully the company’s multi-site capacity.
One of the most challenging aspects of the Plasmor requirements was the haulage function. IFS met this requirement by modifying its existing sales distribution module. The haulage requirement covered all the logistics of taking an order, scheduling a load, the truck delivery, the paperwork, the forward order book as it stands, and how to manage orders that are in the system at different levels of reservation. “Effectively this provided a bespoke solution without compromising the integrity of the overall system,” says Deborah Smith.
“Integration is crucial to ensure an immediate interface at every stage of the process”. Looking ahead the system has also provided the infrastructure to support future supply chain partnerships through electronic data interchange (EDI). It also offers the potential to develop a new channel to market via e-commerce, which will further enhance Plasmor’s competitive edge. Complete Visibility of Production Planning
Immediate improvements have been in the visibility of the production plan allowing the company’s sales team to take full advantage of the additional capacity from the new site at Boughton, U.K. “We can now rely on stock levels and availability to promise deliveries, which has improved customer service,” says Deborah Smith. The integration has also helped Plasmor to make more use of the data within the system. For example, data required for planning and manufacturing, such as process routings, product structures and lead times, are available to the accounts function for costing and accounting purposes.
Another important benefit is the improvement in physical recording of inventory and stock control. “We have full traceability of stock from procurement and manufacturing through to stock transfers to our southern depots, as well as stock reservations against customer orders, through to delivery.” Deborah Smith concludes: “This investment has provided the key to maximizing both customer service and operating efficiency. With better stock visibility, we can balance production output and stock to their optimum levels.”
|
