Continuous improvement is working wonders for Dunlop Aerospace Fluid Dynamics, supported by its integrated and enhanced lean ERP
Key benefits
Lead times cut from 12 weeks to 14 days, in part due to foundation IT
Raw materials inventory halved in just 18 months, due to electronic kanbas etc: virtually empty warehouse area
Hugely reduced costs and improved usage of tooling through vendor-managed inventory (VMI)
Support for lean thinking business and manufacturing improvement
Removed paper and manual processes on the shopfloor, saving thousands of pounds – based on ERP works orders and material tracking, product serialisation and sign-off
Outsourced materials synchronised at assembly with in-house manufactured components
Improved suppliers’ visibility for planning
Cutting admin, improving accuracy and understanding, and saving cost around engineering and manufacturing change by linking CAD to ERP
Continuous improvement is a way of life at Dunlop Aerospace Fluid Dynamics, saving the firm around £160,000 last year in direct costs alone. That’s in factory floor operations, through lean and Six Sigma projects, and in product and production tracking, engineering configuration and improving supply chain operations – with the firm’s ERP system as the integrated hub tying it all together.
The company serves the aerospace engine market, mostly on the civil side, and the Coventry site makes mostly solenoid-controlled bleed valves and associated equipment for customers like Rolls-Royce, GE, Pratt & Whitney and Snecma. Kevin Donnelly, supply chain manager, says there are some 12,000 line items – and all of the usual issues around managing and tracking a mix of production, as well as test, aerospace standards certification, packaging, the supply chain and so on.
“90% of our turnover is from 30 or 40 product lines for the aerospace engine OEMs,” he says, “but our responsibility for spares for the operating companies, and ongoing engineering development and specials keeps us busy.” Also, the firm is under constant pressure to cut costs and lead times to remain competitive. And hence the emphasis on continuous improvement.
ERP (Exel Efacs) has absolutely been part of this. “When we set up Dunlop Equipment in 1994 we knew we needed an integrated system,” says Donnelly. And it is this integration that has helped to support many of the firm’s initiatives – that and the fact that the ERP technology has undergone continuous development, allowing different approaches to sharing information, and making it real time and accurate.
For example, Coventry uses efacs’ configurator, both to drive validated manufacturing orders for its older designs and to ensure that, on new build, only current versions can be selected. Donnelly points out that the configurator not only reduces engineering effort, but takes risk out of the equation.
An early good decision was virtually no bespoke code in the core system, the company instead tailoring its business processes to a large extent around efacs. Paul Hutchings, applications engineer, says that made subsequent upgrades far easier than it otherwise might have been. He also says that, with efacs’ then basis towards Microsoft technologies, add-ons like flexible reports through Crystal, and applications to support the lean factory programmes, were also easy – using Visual Basic and Access.
Last year, when the firm needed to move up a level in terms of server capacity, user numbers and more modern technology, it used its continuous improvement methodologies on the system too. Says Hutchings: “We got the shell of the new system [efacs v8.21] into the test area and got the users to look at it and see how many of our bespoke applications they still needed in view of the functionality now in efacs.” It was a useful audit. “In fact we needed very little.”
Dunlop also took the opportunity of implementing a new system to beef up the power of its shop floor terminals. Hutchings: “We used to have dumb terminals for efacs: now we’ve got PCs and printers, and we’re running additional applications.” The list is long: WIP management and tracking, statistical process control reports, corrective actions forms and reports and tools management all run on the shop floor PCs, the latter with vendor-managed inventory (VMI) which alone has hugely cut costs and improved usage.
Moving on to replenishment, the site now runs kanbans (via email and fax) for most materials, an initiative that resulted in raw materials inventory halved in just 18 months. Meanwhile, higher value and longer lead-time components are managed through efacs MPS and MRP for purchase schedules, while the system also populates an Access database for suppliers to see longer range requirements. The objective is to synchronise arrival of outsourced materials as tightly as possible at the assembly area with the in-house manufactured components, while also providing a mechanism to improve suppliers’ visibility.
DAFD is also looking at a web-based supply chain system to take that further by giving suppliers visibility of changing requirements as they happen – and then sharing in the cost savings. A front end portal system is the way to go, with XML connectivity and functionality to support the various suppliers’ systems and sophistication. “There will be benefit in doing this,” says Donnelly. “Even our small suppliers have the Internet and email, and they’re crying out for visibility.”
Meanwhile, on the customer side DAFD has long term visibility of order requirements from its OEMs’ web-based systems, which show schedules and exception reports. Currently, cell leaders re-key changes weekly into efacs’ for the MPS and MRP explosion to drive purchasing and factory loading, but that too will change very soon. “We’ve got plans to integrate that with efacs,” says Hutchings, “using XML to directly populate our schedules.”
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