Westin Design
Increased productivity by over 100%, whilst achieving 99% on time delivery, at domestic kitchen extraction specialists.
Celebrity chefs, lifestyle TV programmes and magazines have fuelled our demand for range cookers installed in an island, fireplace or against a wall, and integral to them is the removal of cooking odours and contaminants without losing heat, and possibly fitting into a whole house ventilation system.
Westin Design of Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, are manufacturers and suppliers of innovative and exclusive extraction solutions for high-end domestic range kitchens. This privately owned company sells to kitchen design studios, architects and developers for conversions, refurbishments and new builds across the UK and Ireland. Remarkably it has enjoyed a year-on-year growth in turnover throughout the last decade.
Westin Design provide complete turnkey, individual extraction solutions on short lead-times, encompassing standard or custom hoods and built-in units, panels and a variety of fan options: as manufacturers and not just distributors, they provide customers with security of supply and the reassurance of complete control over design, quality and delivery.
As a tool empowering Westin Design to increase their productivity twofold in four years, the company has been using a fully integrated ERP system – WinMan Version 7, for which it currently holds 15 licences. Indeed it was the first one to use WinMan’s Product Configurator, Production Scheduling and CRM/SRM facilities in an integrated form.
Mike Sharpe, Innovations and Technology Manager of Westin Design, remarks: “We have worked with the WinMan team for ten years now, and they have been most supportive and helpful from day one.”
His Managing Director Ian Sheppard declares: “Our WinMan ERP system allows me to directly and quickly access the management information I need to run the business – real-time reporting of key performance indicators such as operating efficiencies and deliveries. Vitally, more consistent pricing gives a truer margin on the work we perform.
“Meanwhile the system has supported our company’s strategy of investment for growth and its ability to meet delivery promises, hence strengthening its reputation in the marketplace as a reliable and trustworthy supplier. An accurate delivery date to the nearest day can now be assigned by our sales administration staff within half-an-hour of an order being placed. We proudly meet over 99% of those dates.”
Product Configurator
Replacing previous data on spreadsheets, the Product Configurator facility is used internally to generate fast and consistent quotes for custom-made extractors. The framework Configurator provided within WinMan has been populated by Westin Design. It builds a complete product structure for manufacturing the finished product – with options selected going on to determine later choices and numerical entries sitting behind those options where applicable.
For instance, the values for materials of construction (such as grade, thickness and paint finishes for metals), electrical components and labour costs can be calculated automatically, based on the user’s selections and entries. Internal labour costs are related to the geometry of a product, and the major processes and durations (in standard minutes) required to produce it in a manufacturing cell are also added to the bill. Westin do not usually include sundries (such as screws and washers) in their product structures, focussing instead on major and critical path components, labour and processes that materially affect production and price.
So, having determined the category of customer, type of extraction (built-in, wall-mounted or island) and sub-types, the Product Configurator works through a series of prompts as appropriate to the enquiry. These can include questions for example regarding the chimney style, baseplate, ducting, types of fan and lighting, electronic and lighting control systems and their location, lighting power and transformer type and filters. Added to this will be such variables as packaging, transportation, product instruction and installation manuals – with most inputs being optional, having been populated with suggested answers automatically.
Meanwhile the WinMan team have aided Westin Design in importing their vital historical algorithms and design geometries, so that the wheel need not be reinvented for each new job.
Production Scheduling
The Product Configurator creates a manufactured part number, description and structure (Bill of Materials, including processes) which, like any standard manufactured product, feeds into the WinMan Production Scheduling system to determine an exact date of delivery. As soon as the business proposal has been accepted by the customer, MRP and Production Scheduling kick in to ensure manufacturing orders and related purchase orders are processed in a timely manner – Production Scheduling enables the loading of individual activity centres (or processes, such as cutting, fabrication, painting) by all, some or individual manufacturing orders to be immediately assessed, allowing an accurate delivery date to be assigned and problems to be averted.
Scheduling at Westin is based around six activity centres, of which three are cellular manufacturing teams of multi-skilled operators. Meanwhile a visual planning board (VPB) for production scheduling makes life easier by showing the loading of each production cell in real time. That board has enabled Westin Design to pass much of the planning task to the general administration/sales office for immediate provision of due dates to customers and is used to easily highlight capacity problems (surpluses and deficits). Work schedules and calendars are used which amend the capacity of a cell to produce on a given day (taking into account holidays, machine maintenance downtime, etc), and this is reflected on the production scheduling board.
Operations Manager Jason Brooks underlines the role of the MRP facility in WinMan ERP software: “Lean, cellular manufacturing has replaced the previous, less efficient regime of batch manufacturing and ordering at Westin Design, with the result that we have increased productivity by over 100% in the last four years.
“In support of this, the MRP system in WinMan has significantly reduced our stock levels by closely monitoring them and relating them strictly to demand. Accordingly, when the stockholding of a relevant item falls below a certain level, then the system tells you either to manufacture or to buy in more. We also know where stocks have come from, where they have gone and what their value is. There is greater accountability if raw materials and components are damaged, missing or late arriving.
“So in many ways the WinMan ERP system has required and enabled us to improve our warehousing organisation, making it far tighter and more disciplined.
“Furthermore, under WinMan our stocktakes are performed in only six hours, not two days as previously. The MRP in WinMan gives traceability for errors, all the way from placing a purchase order to settling a supplier’s invoice. And the system monitors the key performance indicators of our lean manufacturing processes in real time, to keep us right on track 24/7.”
CRM & SRM System
The Customer Relationship and Supplier Relationship Management (CRM and SRM) system is a single access point for information relating to thousands of Westin Design customers and suppliers. The detailing and management of prospect, customer and supplier relationships have therefore become more streamlined, creating opportunities for increased sales and better communication up and down the supply chain.
As a hub, the WinMan CRM system assists the sales and administrative staff of Westin Design with internal communications and the administration of each customer account – up-to-date contacts, background, financials and order history. Sales visits, customer feedback, endorsements and unpaid invoices are, amongst other things, all faithfully recorded and reported.
In summary, as demand grows for luxury domestic kitchens, Westin Design will be able to meet the consequent requirement for extraction solutions, guided and supported each step of the way by their feature-rich, fully integrated ERP system WinMan. Their innovative, desirable, high-performance products, lean manufacturing culture and competitive advantages derived from WinMan are set to keep this highly progressive manufacturer well ahead of new entrants into the market for the foreseeable future.