MGS Technical Plastics Video Case Study 

00:00:06 - 00:00:33 "WinMan has helped us to avoid a number of problems that we had in the past. These included things like transcriptional errors because we had a multiple system setup. Also, we now have much better traceability. Traceability is key when you're looking at injection moulding and when you're dealing with blue-chip automotive type companies."

00:00:34 - 00:01:09 "MGS Technical Plastics are a plastic injection moulding company with some associated assembly work. That effectively means we have a range of injection moulding machines from 35 up to 900 tons. We serve industries such as automotive, hygiene, electronics, and household goods. To deal with the automotive industry, we had no choice but to move to a proper integrated system. The automotive standard IATF 16949 requires you to have traceability to do proper problem-solving. WinMan gives us that full traceability right the way through the system."

00:01:10 - 00:01:41 "WinMan was one of three companies that presented to us, and the management overwhelmingly voted for it. I was happy and surprised to see that it turned out to be the most economical choice as well. It is good value for money. We had a small team for the implementation to catch the needs of all departments. I've been through several implementations over the years, and there was almost no resistance to putting this system in, which is very unusual. It looks simple and people are happy to use it."

00:01:42 - 00:02:13 "WinMan is integrated throughout the company, from goods coming in the door to accounts and invoicing at the other end. The costing modules are a huge improvement on our previous manual methods which involved several spreadsheets spliced together. It used to take a long time to cost anything; now we can do recosts with a few clicks of a button. We have very accurate information on our product margins, which we never had before."

00:02:14 - 00:02:55 "The production schedule makes sure we don't double-book machines. In fact, it won't let you do it. We integrate it to a machine monitoring system to track uptime and energy usage. From a planning point of view, it's been a massive change. We have one system for everything: advising what material to order, machine speeds, operator efficiencies, and stock holdings. It advises what you need to order and when, taking into account supplier and machine lead times."

00:02:56 - 00:03:37 "Tooling management is very simple. It allows you to put enough detail in to know where your tools are and how many cycles they've done, which is useful for maintenance planning. A simple report tells us when they are ready for maintenance. We run stock and shipping labels through a smooth integration with BarTender. The MRP system picks up on the Bill of Materials (BOM), which can be as complex as you like. It tells people exactly what goes into the job, preventing mistakes and controlling what is issued."

00:03:38 - 00:04:19 "There was a time in the past when I could spend a full day on an IT issue; that doesn't happen now. Most of my time now is spent moving things forward, report writing and trying to improve the business rather than just trying to stop things going wrong. If our growth plans carry through, we may be on more than one site, and I'm sure it will be more than adequate. It's infinitely scalable. The beauty of WinMan is that it's simple and effective. It allows you to run your business without getting in the way. It helps us avoid the dramas associated with IT and just get on with what we do, moulding and assembly."