ABL Circuits Electronics ERP Video Case Study

00:00:05 - 00:00:35 "The best thing is actually just sales are up. We've got more sales in because we can see and track our quotes and our manufacturing, so we can see when there is space and when we can win things—or maybe we can go a little bit cheaper because we're not quite as busy on that day. So overall, we're doing better; we're selling more products. That's the long and short of it."

00:00:36 - 00:01:13 "ABL Circuits has been going for 42 years. We're an electronics contract manufacturer, which means customers come to us with a product idea and we build it. We’re a bit different because we can do everything—manufacturing the boards and assembling them—under one roof. Pre-WinMan feels a bit 'pre-war' now. We had an accountancy package, but the manufacturing side was basically a load of spreadsheets. They helped us grow, but when you step away from Excel, you realize there are so many more hidden benefits."

00:01:14 - 00:01:51 "Data input was one of my pet peeves—inputting the same data multiple times drives me nuts. You get rid of that with WinMan because you put it in correctly at the beginning during the quote and it follows it the whole way through to the invoice. Quality systems are key; we do medical and aerospace work, so traceability is huge. At each stage, we can record a quality inspection."

00:01:52 - 00:02:30 "We've just set up WinMan Go, which allows the whole team to follow and track an individual board as it goes around the factory. We can record if it passed or failed tests, and all that is stored in the cloud. Having access to WinMan at all times makes a great difference—I can jump on and see everything that's going on. It future-proofs us and gives us flexibility on the shop floor since you just need internet access."

00:02:31 - 00:03:10 "We chose WinMan initially because of its flexibility. In manufacturing, everyone is a little bit different and quirky; if you have a rigid system that doesn't allow you to build it around how you work, it causes problems. The WinMan team is very approachable—you can get hold of them to say 'this isn't quite working' or 'can we do this?'. They give us the opportunity to build modules that help our specific aspects, which helps tremendously."

00:03:11 - 00:03:49 "We broke it into three phases. Getting basics running took about three or four months from sending the PO to starting to run it. Once you start processing, you realize it's all so logical and easy to pick up. Everyone is happy with the change; they have a tablet or screen and can see exactly what's going on. It's simple to see what you have in stock and run the MRP to see what you can and can't make. There have been many times where we realized we already had parts we didn't know about."

00:03:50 - 00:04:28 "Barcoding and scanning are big helps. We can pick up a reel, scan it, and know exactly what's on it. That knowledge is power—when everything is at your fingertips, you can manufacture a lot quicker and efficiency goes up. Phase two for us is BI (Business Intelligence). We're collecting data so we can do intelligent things with it and represent it as something meaningful."

00:04:29 - 00:05:10 "Phase three is a bit of 'pie in the sky' thinking where we'd like to integrate it with HubSpot via an API to get our marketing data into WinMan. We also want to link our other systems, like our pick-and-place machines, so the databases talk to each other. It’s a big task, but if they are linked together, the factory will be absolutely seamless."