Homesafe is one of the leading manufacturers of composite doorsets in the UK. Supplying primarily to the social housing sector but also to trade outlets, the £15 million turnover company has seen steady growth since its formation in 1993 and now employs approximately 140 people. Growth has also been added by the recent acquisition of a former competitor that stretched Homesafe’s existing IT systems to the limit.
What makes the company’s business processes so demanding is not the large scale of manufacture – 35,000 doorsets per annum – but that each doorset is unique, comprised of an almost infinite combination of variables which can be specified by the customer. Paul Nugent is Homesafe’s managing director and he gives a brief insight into the possible permutations: “Because we make doorsets and not just doors, every product has to fit a unique sized doorway in a particular property and can come in a choice of colour, hardware, hinges, glazing, side lights, and top lights, with each possible combination having specific manufacturing rules and considerations.”
It is no surprise to find that one of Homesafe’s biggest challenges is in the area of stock control and purchasing. As Paul explains: “While we can keep buffer stocks of certain regular use items, it also is essential for us to have an accurate idea of our actual and forecast orders so we can plan ahead. It is also an ongoing struggle to get the lead times of our suppliers to keep pace with an ever decreasing set of customer lead times. We continually have to re-adjust our re-order points as these change.” Another major challenge is the sheer complexity of the Bills of Materials (BoMs) and routings involved in the manufacturing of a complete doorset.
Prior to investing in WinMan.NET from SSL WinMan, Homesafe had been using two disparate IT systems combined with a number of manual procedures to try and manage the business. These were supplemented by an array of spreadsheets as the ordering system had no effective product configuration capabilities or stock control functionality. Indeed, stock control was limited to a basic accounts-driven stock file located on one PC. Paul recalls how laborious things used to be: “We would have five people whose responsibility it was to manually enter each order, line by line, into our ordering system with each line requiring considerable duplicated data. This created a continual stream of people and paperwork between order processing, purchasing and manufacturing because people simply didn’t trust the information and its accuracy in the system.” This wasn’t helped by the order processing system running out of available data fields in which to store the required amount of entries which led to a whole language of abbreviations and notes being used which were not always interpreted the same way.
Prior to Paul’s involvement, Homesafe had long sought a sophisticated product configuration module but in a four-year period had been let down by two different vendors, one internationally renowned. When Homesafe acquired a former competitor, Lindman Doors, the need for a working configurator become critical which led to Homesafe placing an order for WinMan.Net just one month later based largely on Paul’s positive experience of an earlier version of WinMan at Securidor, a sister company to Homesafe. He states: “We had already built a strong relationship with SSL at Securidor which had very similar business processes and challenges and most importantly, we had already developed and were using a powerful product configurator within WinMan.”
Homesafe elected for a two-stage implementation and was fully live on WinMan. Net in just over six months. Paul compares this with the previous flawed attempts and identifies the reasons why WinMan succeeded where the others failed: “I can’t stress enough the importance of working with a company that is capable of understanding how your business works as well as you do.” He also stresses that the complete fully functional WinMan.NET implementation cost less than the development costs alone invested in the last failed attempt.
Things are now very different at Homesafe thanks to WinMan. The previous labour intensive and error prone order entry process has been replaced by an intuitive, completely validated process which ensures that only correct data is placed on the system. In terms of time saved, the company is now processing a much higher number of orders and using 40 per cent of the previous resource requirements. This data accuracy combined with the ability to do a full MRP run allows WinMan to generate a full set of works papers relating to each individual door assembly. And because the information in WinMan is stored in SQL tables, Homesafe is also able to push relevant order and order progress information out to the plant floor to be displayed on flat screen monitors.
The accuracy of the data has had a profound effect on the culture of the company which was previously highly sceptical of its IT system. Paul comments: “It took time but because WinMan proved itself time and time again when people still felt the need to double check what the system was telling them, they have now come to completely trust the system and the information it delivers.” This is especially noticeable when it comes to reporting, which was a major weakness in the former system.
When it comes to quantifying the benefits from WinMan, Paul states that the business has in essence doubled its output without having to expand its workforce which equates to a 50 per cent efficiency saving. He also credits it with removing 15 per cent of materials out of working capital in the first year alone and anticipates this also being the case for year two. Invoicing is another key area where WinMan has had a major impact on Homesafe’s efficiency, with the greater accuracy now possible with WinMan being seen as directly contributing to a reduction in average payment days from over 60 to now only 50. All of this combines to give a Return on Investment of approximately 12 months.
Homesafe
Homesafe is one of the leading manufacturers of composite doorsets in the UK. Supplying primarily to the social housing sector but also to trade outlets, the £15 million turnover company has seen steady growth since its formation in 1993 and now employs approximately 140 people.
www.homesafedoors.co.uk
Courtesy of European Supply Chain Management 2009
www.europeansupplychainmanagement.co.uk