Petersen Stainless Rigging Video Case Study

00:00:06 - 00:00:41 "We operate a production methodology called DBR here, Drum-Buffer-Rope, and it's a sort of pull-through methodology. It's very different to the way that WinMan was originally configured. WinMan is configured around a push based on forecasts and manufacturing based on certain due dates. We've flipped that on its head; we've used the customisation features in WinMan to allow us to operate a pull-through based on stock levels, buffer levels, and the criticality of those levels."

00:00:49 - 00:01:21 "Petersen is a small manufacturing company. We operate in three locations in the UK and we've got three sales offices worldwide. Our head office is in Blaydon in the North East of England; it's where we do all of our manufacturing. We make specialist stainless steel equipment for connecting anything to anything that needs to be connected in some kind of safety-critical application. We work to the aircraft standard AS9100."

00:01:22 - 00:02:14 "The WinMan 'out of the box' worked in the way that we were running the factory at the time, and it just allowed us to modernise our systems, which was fantastic. So we could hit the ground running. The additional reporting let us look at different areas of the business in more detail. We then decided we wanted to operate in a different way, which required some customisation. We learned about different functionalities through various conversations with the team at WinMan."

00:02:15 - 00:02:51 "We built our own reports; it was quite straightforward using the report building tools to provide us with the information we needed to actually run the shop floor. The implementation was pretty seamless because as far as the guys on the shop floor were concerned, nothing really changed. They were still using WinMan Go to track when they'd started and finished a job. That was the only information we needed really from the shop floor."

00:02:52 - 00:03:22 "Two things we were really looking for when picking a new ERP system: one was full materials traceability throughout the system with a full audit process, so we could check who'd done work, what tools and gauges had been used on what jobs. We did all of that straight out of the box. The other thing was a full inter-company system for dealing with transactions and producing inter-company accounts across all our locations."

00:03:23 - 00:04:12 "In my role as CEO, I've found it a really good piece of software but also a good company. You can actually speak to people who are designing and developing the code. Since we started operating WinMan, the administration of the business, the time taken, has certainly gone down by at least a third. We're currently implementing it in our offices in Sweden and in the US. That will make it much easier for me as the CEO to look and see how those businesses are doing without waiting for reporting."

00:04:13 - 00:04:48 "As we go forward with the multi-site implementation, we'll be able to consolidate accounts functions in the head office, which will make a huge difference to the cost of doing business in our other locations. Next steps for Petersen is an ambitious growth strategy. The system is perfectly scalable. The fact that WinMan does absolutely everything we need gives us confidence that if any change is made, it's all still going to work. There's a whole load of stuff we could be reporting on around wastage and variances that we've not even scratched the surface of yet."