Bryken Precision Engineering Video Case Study

00:00:05 - 00:00:32 "I don't think we could be a high precision component manufacturer without WinMan now. We are a subcontract manufacturer, we've got 98 employees, 45 CNC machines ranging from small sliding head machines all the way up to full five-axis prismatic milants..."

00:00:33 - 00:01:06 "...and everything in between. WinMan covers everything from order receiving, purchase orders, sales orders, material allocations, manufacturing orders, accounting software, material traceability. I think it was probably one of the easier parts of getting WinMan in our system. Without material traceability, we probably wouldn't have 60% of our customers. Any ERP system always seems a big investment, but an investment is what it is—it's an investment in the company, in yourself, and in customers."

00:01:07 - 00:01:41 "The biggest benefit for Bryken was probably digitisation and integration. The system we had was good, we used it since the '90s and it was probably cutting edge back then, but as time went on we got to a point where we were behind everyone else. We had no integration with emails, we had no integration with systems we were using, reporting was very hard, we were writing ourselves tickets out for work, traceability was very, very loose at best. So we knew we needed to jump on that ERP system."

00:01:42 - 00:02:15 "So it's helped us get to the point where we are five years down the line. We're fully integrated to WinMan and we're looking forward to the next five years. It took us two years to get to the point where we chose WinMan. We went through many, many interviews, many, many demonstrations, we got down to the final five. And after the final demo, we all agreed that WinMan was probably the best solution for us. We felt the base service they offered was brilliant, but it was also going to be able to be customisable to what we wanted and the nuances we wanted."

00:02:16 - 00:03:04 "We try and automate as many processes as possible within the system to make it easier for the users, which is where WinMan Go was a big selling point for us. We didn't want all the users to have to go through the UI. So what WinMan Go enabled us to do was simplify the processes through an app-based system. All the counting of products as they go through different stages is done, the allocation of material is done through an app. We are in the process of having a mobile device that is going to scan and allocate at the same time. Without WinMan Go we couldn't do that. Then we also have dispatching and kanban orders; they're all automatically generated through WinMan Go. It just makes it more foolproof and easier for the user."

00:03:05 - 00:03:36 "I use WinMan Go to allocate parts to the next step for people in second operations. I'm creating manufacturing orders, I am deleting manufacturing orders, raising POs, and doing goods receipts coming back. You can see every little part—who's done that, who's done that, who's done that—and you can easily identify where the parts are because we have products in our portfolio that will maybe go through two or three machining processes and will also go to two or three subcontract processes."

00:03:37 - 00:04:13 "So we really needed to see where these products were throughout the system and setting that up was quite difficult, which is why we chose to go through the different levels of the same product so we could see exactly where it was and gain control of every process that we've got. And that gives us a full view on our WIP (Work in Progress) for this product, so we can trace this product all the way through the factory at any stage and we can cost for every process that we've got. That's part of the journey we've been on for the last year—really analysing costs and WinMan is helping us do that."

00:04:14 - 00:04:40 "So we're now using this shop floor data collection with PowerBI. We've just been in talks with WinMan over the last couple of months about now feeding this data back into WinMan. So when I do a costing report on each product, I can have this data of efficiency and tooling costs. So I've got a real value on each product cost to make sure the customer is getting the right price for that product—that's to protect the customer and myself."

00:04:41 - 00:05:03 "I think we are probably 12 months away from getting to the end of this journey we're on, and then there will probably be another journey we'll want to go on to digitise something else to make it more easy. As a supplier, a subcontract manufacturer, we've always got to go with something new. You can't stand still, you've got to change, and WinMan supports us on that change all the way."