WHEN RUSH BECOMES ROUTINE

Turbo Components & Engineering (TCE; Houston, TX) specializes in the repair and manufacturing of close tolerance bearings and seals for turbomachinery in the chemical, petrochemical, oil production and refining, and utilities industries. The company uses a variety of standard metals and engineered thermoplastics to produce a range of bearings, seals, and custom parts. In addition, TCE provides engineering work in bearing and seal designs, rotor-dynamics analyses, and bearing-failure analyses.

As a small operation that functions at a very high level for its customers, it is not the quantity of goods that the plant ships out the door that holds the most importance. Instead, it is the quality and timeliness of the parts and products. This is particularly true when many of those jobs are very complex in engineering, often requiring dozens of line items in a typical work order. In these situations, even the most organized shop can struggle to keep track of jobs in terms of scheduling, materials planning, real-time status reporting, and quality output.

Facing these challenges, TCE looked to implement an enterprise resource planning (ERP) software solution that would control costs and ensure fail proof, on-time delivery of parts and services to its customers. A few years ago, the company chose Global Shop Solutions (The Woodlands, TX), the largest privately-held ERP software provider in the U.S. TCE depends on their One-System ERP SolutionsTM software to maintain a strong sense of order in the shop and to control costs for a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

TCE operations are primarily on the production side of the business. From the time an order comes through the door to the time it is completed and sent to the customer, there are several variables: ?From the sales order to the work order to the router, people scanning in on the router in the work centers, purchasing being done to the job or to inventory and then charged to the job, we use One-System extensively for this sort of sales/shop control,? says Larry Fisher, vice president of TCE.

Gaining control of the shop floor is especially important for TCE, which receives multiple rush orders from its customers who depend on their machines to work for their businesses to run efficiently. When a critical component fails in a machine, that machine ceases to function. Operations go down, schedules are disrupted, and the supply chain gets kinked. Within this connective business model, TCE finds its services are a primary factor in quickly restoring a customer?s machine back into production.

For TCE, a quick turnaround almost always means adjusting their production schedule internally, without disrupting promised delivery dates. ?With so much of our business being ?rush? work here, there?s no such thing as a ?routine? schedule. Often a job comes in and it?s out in less than a month, a week or in some cases, less than two or three days,? notes Fisher. ?Because of this, sometimes our routine gets pushed back, but we must still meet our original delivery dates.?

With rush jobs that weren?t in the forecast, costs can spiral if not managed properly. The ERP software helps TCE manage every aspect of the shop floor from forecasting and scheduling to routing and delivery, ensuring that they are able to respond to last-minute requests while continuing to produce in-place orders.

It?s all too common in manufacturing today for an ERP solution to be purchased and installed, only for the user to later discover that it?s difficult and unwieldy to implement, prohibiting complete integration throughout the operation. In other words, workers who find the software system complex simply don?t use it, eliminating vital production and productivity information for analysis by management.

?Our ERP software is a user-friendly system for all of our people out on the shop floor,? Fisher explains. ?We?re so fluent with it now that it doesn?t even take new employees long to learn the system. This is particularly true with the GUI system we use. We have terminals where our staff can scan in their name for the job, scan into a sequence and even what line of a job they?re on. Everything is simple to access and use. It?s live all of the time, and the consistent flow of data makes daily balancing easy for us.?

The ease of use spreads to every aspect of the business, including administration. ?I always know where a job is in terms of completion just by looking at my computer screen.? Fisher remarks. ?For example, with the color-coded Time and Attendance module, I can see which jobs are on-going and who?s working on them, as well as who?s on the clock, but not on a job. When I combine this with advanced scheduling, I can also see where my hot-spots are and what my capacity looks like.?

Operations intelligence is at the heart of the One-System ERP software system. It is an approach to lean production that has been proven time and again in real world applications where the difference between control and chaos is often measured in mere minutes of indirect labor costs. In such situations, the last thing any manufacturer or job shop needs is a lack of information as a result of the inability or reluctance of personnel to participate in the ERP process. Workers must feel invested in the ERP integration effort, and the easier the system is to use, the more likely they are to become a part of the process.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Global Shop Solutions, 975 Evergreen Circle, The Woodlands, TX 77380, 281-681-1959, Fax: 281-681-2662, www.globalshopsolutions.com.