Metaltech Precision Engineers Ltd is a progressive and versatile medium-light engineering company offering broad based services in the precision sub-contract machining environment. With over 25 years manufacturing experience in the automotive, aircraft, pumps and hydraulics serving the requirements of such prestigious clients as Rolls Royce Plc and Specialist Car Products Ltd, Metaltech has seen a multitude of changes within this rapidly evolving marketplace.

With an ongoing commitment to implementing the latest technology, the company turned to Preactor International for a scheduling solution that delivers Just In Time, every time.

Keith Crow has been Production Controller at Metaltech for over 3 years, and has over 15 years experience in this sector. He outlines the typical problems facing companies like Metaltech. "In any subcontracting environment, the customer dictates the business model. Customers want shorter turnaround times, and increasingly accurate ones too with no decrease in quality. Hence the move to wholesale adoption of the JIT model which effectively moves stock control issues further up the supply chain. A problem at any stage puts pressure on the rest of the chain, and it is not infeasible for problem links in the chain to become bypassed."

Such demands became impossible to meet with Metaltech's paper based system which Keith admits was at times, "a combination of assessment and guesswork." Of key concern was the lack of visibility concerning workflow movement within the enterprise. This combined with difficulties in allocating key machine, human and material resources to specific works orders, substantially affected the ability to complete orders on time. Workload capacity along with related materials ordering issues was also hard to assess, which led to difficulties in providing accurate due dates for customer enquiries. Keith describes it as "literally chaos. You had to hold all the operations in your head, bottlenecks were too frequent, and you could potentially doubly allocate resources and not know until the operator concerned told you!"

The above market changes, continued internal growth, and the confirmation by an independent IT analyst convinced Metaltech that a scheduling solution needed to be sourced. The key purchasing requirements were scalability, adaptability and affordability. Any solution also had to be able to integrate with the existing software packages Metaltech were currently using. After careful evaluation of several systems, and an endorsement from the same independent IT analyst, a P200 FCS system from Preactor was purchased in 1995.

However, it was not until 1998, upon Keith's appointment, that the project to implement the system began in earnest. Keith explains the reasoning behind this. "Like many SME's, major software implementations are often time consuming and require strong project management. In my former company, I had strong experience working with MRP software so the project to implement Preactor became my responsibility. This began by assessing the software already in place."

By this time, Metaltech already had 2 software systems in place that provided some limited planning assistance. The first was a planning sheet package called Perform that contained all the relevant Bill of Materials (BOM) and route through information sets. The other was a custom Access database which formed the company's order book. Every confirmed order was entered here including details specifying whether materials were being supplied by the client or whether they would have to be ordered or used from stock.

The company's next step was to contact Stan Jonik of SFJ Systems, the Preactor solution provider from whom the initial system had been purchased to integrate Preactor into these existing systems. The first step involved building a 2 way link to the Access database and a one way link with Perform by which information could be read into Preactor. The next step involved introducing all the available information into a customised Work To Report which determined whether a given resource or operation was available and showed raw material availability. Nigel Jonic of SFJ comments on the implementation. "Preactor's in-built integration tools enabled us to configure the system the way Metaltech wanted so that it was not a case of making the data fit Preactor but making Preactor fit the data".

Metaltech is now able to work in a much more efficient way. Each month, the order book is interrogated to determine existing customer commitments. These are valued and set against the necessary breakeven budget figure. Relevant jobs can then be selected to meet this which are then fed exclusively into Preactor. This allows an immediate accurate assessment of whether the plan for the month will be successful or whether a different model is required, including possibly bringing forward other orders.

This increase in accuracy and visibility can then be passed on to the customer in terms of realistic proposed delivery dates and work progress updates when required. This has helped increase confidence in Metaltech's customer base which, in a market where referrals can be a significant sales stream, can lead to new business. The company is understandably enthusiastic about the success of the project. "Everything is now much more organised, with a vast increase in resource management and optimisation. This leads to increased worker satisfaction as the software takes into account how they work and some of the unplanned scenarios that can occur. The combination of Preactor's software and Nigel and Stan's deep understanding of the actual engineering environment has enabled us to work to Just In Time, every time."