Thomas Swan Scientific Equipment Ltd (TSSEL)
Industry :
Manufacturing
Scenarios :
Expansion of existing Microsoft
Business Solutions-Navision (Financials) system to include manufacturing &
inventory control
Return on Investment :
£1m in first 6 months.
Thomas Swan Scientific
is involved in the manufacture and resale of systems to manufacture LED
wafers. Annual turnover for the company is £20-30m. The company’s
headquarters and manufacturing facility is in Swavesey, in Cambridgeshire,
employing over 80 staff.
Situation
The company needed to
urgently expand their existing Microsoft Navision Financials systems to also
include manufacturing and inventory management. The existing manufacturing
system was proving inadequate for running the business.
Current systems in use within Thomas Swan included a mixture of financial
and office systems, accepting both manual and computerised data entry. Time
consuming manual procedures were used to independently input data into both
the Microsoft Navision and manufacturing systems. The constraints of the
existing manufacturing system include limited functionality for purchasing
operations, inadequate reporting capabilities and an inability to be
configured to meet the needs of the business. The new system needed to
'go-live' within 3 months, and the company approached Anglia Business
Solutions, as the existing supplier of the Microsoft Navision Financials
System, to undertake the project.
Solution
Thomas Swan Scientific had specified that the
extension to the existing Microsoft Navision systems should, as a minimum,
cover; sales and purchase order processing, stock control and manufacturing
planning and production. A key requirement was for a single company-wide
information system accessible throughout the organisation. The company
wanted to significantly reduce manual procedures and paperwork, and
effortlessly produce the management information required to run the
business. The new system needed to have the capacity to expand as the
business dictates.
The existing Microsoft Navision Financials system was upgraded to Microsoft
Navision V3.60 and at the same time the planning, manufacturing and
inventory modules were implemented in a single-phase operation.
The manufacturing module replaced a combination of manual procedures and
hard copy spreadsheet schedules used by the planners and buyers to raise
purchase and production orders. The lead-time for a top-level system is as
long as 5 months and the admin-intensive procedures were heavily dependent
on the accuracy and job knowledge of the personnel involved.
Inventory
The full
Inventory functionality is used with some additional enhancements developed
by Anglia Business Solutions, to fully support the desired way of working.
Changes
included the following:
-
The
addition of an ‘Issue Number’ on items to aid engineering change control
-
An
‘Inspection Required’ indicator that both provided information of the
inspection level and provided for a different routing on receipt of the
item.
-
Automatic checking on receipt to indicate if the item was an overdue
requirement on Production/Sales
-
Orders
-
A
‘Status’ field to allow for monitoring the completion of data against
the item
Manufacturing
In order
to support the company’s current procedures separate Design and Production
Bill of Material (BOM) tables were provided with the facility to copy the
Design BOM to the Production BOM table. This allows the design team freedom
to create and amend a BOM without any risk of impact on production until it
was chosen to release the change.
Further support for existing procedures was incorporated with provision for
multi-level BOM reporting that shows the full costing based on both standard
cost and last direct cost. Standard Microsoft Navision MRP provided all the
necessary functionality and no changes were necessary.
Document Creation
All
documentation is produced and controlled from within Microsoft Navision,
designed to conform to SITPRO standard. This eliminated the need to use
restrictive pre-printed formats. Facilities are provided to allow additional
information to be entered on any documentation, and a sub-form created for
the entry of packing details on the Packing List Document.
Functionality was enhanced to enable the automatic calculation and posting
of Advance Payment schedules. All transactions are fully integrated with the
existing Microsoft Navision Financial modules.
Training & Data Transfer
Full user
training on the new system functionality was provided by Anglia Business
Solutions to enable the smooth transition from the old systems to the new.
Data transfer was facilitated by the creation of specific data ports. This
also allowed the user training to take place using data and scenarios that
were both relevant and familiar to the users.
Benefits
“Our old
manufacturing control system was creaking at the seams and we urgently
needed to take action” comments Charles Russell, Thomas Swan’s Director of
Finance & Administration. “Anglia Business Solutions’ knowledge of
manufacturing processes was a key element in the transition to the new
environment”.
Russell continues, “In summary, the implementation went brilliantly. It
worked right first time. The system is already meeting the needs of the
business and is being accepted as a vast improvement by most users. Even
purchasing now have access to more information than they realised they would
have. It has freed up the purchasing staff from routine administration tasks
allowing them to focus on negotiation."
"In one transaction, £130,000 was saved on previous prices paid for the same
items. In the six months since the installation of the upgraded Microsoft
Navision system, we have made cost savings totalling £1m. This has allowed
us to reap back our investment to date, of £80k, more than twelve times
over.”
“A further business benefit of the new
system has been in the area of Materials Requirements Planning. With the
previous system, the MRP procedure took 13 hours. With Microsoft Navision,
the run is completed in 30 minutes. This allows us to quickly replan our
work schedule as circumstances change. It will greatly assist us in
providing better customer service by reducing product lead times.”
Russell concludes, “We are 100% reliant on the system and are already
planning future developments. These will be based on new business needs such
as CRM and remote system access where we can see future significant business
benefits.”
Software & Hardware
Microsoft
Business Solutions-Navision
New Modules: Inventory
Manufacturing
Warehouse Mgmt
Services Required
Solution Model
Project Management
Upgrade to Microsoft Navision v3.60
Data Transfer
Bespoke Microsoft Navision Development
User Training