Case Studies
Find out about the real world impact of our solutions
Custom Manufacturing Case Study
8 employees, family owned business
Problem
James runs a custom manufacturing business that services the construction industry. His workmanship is unparalleled, and he genuinely cares about his customers; so he is never short of work. Unfortunately, his current business setup doesn’t allow him to grow his workforce, or to step back from the day-to-day running of the business, and his wife Steph often has to step in to manage the bookkeeping and admin work.
He is working 80+ hours per week, and isn’t making as much money as he should because unplanned overtime loadings are costing him around $100,000 per year. This happens because he takes orders 6 to 10 weeks in advance, but only has 1 week of forward visibility into his production schedule. In order to maintain promised delivery dates he often needs to add unplanned late-night and weekend shifts.
He also has challenges around onboarding new workers, because custom manufacturing is hard and the learning curve is steep.
He is working 80+ hours per week, and isn’t making as much money as he should because unplanned overtime loadings are costing him around $100,000 per year. This happens because he takes orders 6 to 10 weeks in advance, but only has 1 week of forward visibility into his production schedule. In order to maintain promised delivery dates he often needs to add unplanned late-night and weekend shifts.
He also has challenges around onboarding new workers, because custom manufacturing is hard and the learning curve is steep.
Challenges
While off-the-shelf manufacturing software provides visibility into your forward production schedule, it only works if the quality of your data is good.
Every item in the manufacturing software needs to have its own unique BOM (Bill of Materials) and Routing. If you think of how a food recipe works, a BOM is like your list of ingredients, while the Routing is your method for making it.
Routings are what drive your production schedule, so if they’re wrong, then so are your predicted timings and capacities. While James is pretty good at estimating required materials, creating routings is manually is complex and error-prone, and would have taken him an EXTRA 15 hours of work every week.
James’ production processes are undocumented and are sometimes poorly structured, which makes onboarding new staff difficult and time consuming.
Every item in the manufacturing software needs to have its own unique BOM (Bill of Materials) and Routing. If you think of how a food recipe works, a BOM is like your list of ingredients, while the Routing is your method for making it.
Routings are what drive your production schedule, so if they’re wrong, then so are your predicted timings and capacities. While James is pretty good at estimating required materials, creating routings is manually is complex and error-prone, and would have taken him an EXTRA 15 hours of work every week.
James’ production processes are undocumented and are sometimes poorly structured, which makes onboarding new staff difficult and time consuming.
Solution
This level of complexity requires a multi-step process to get the right outcome:
- Work with James’ team to map, model, improve and document their high-level admin and production processes
- Propose a software architecture that simplifies James’ quoting process and connects it to the manufacturing (ERP) software, while being sure to reduce admin overhead
- Validate the proposed software architecture against James’ processes and business requirements to ensure that it will actually solve his problems.
- Build a highly detailed logical model of how James actually makes his products, then program that logic into custom quoting (CPQ) software. This software allows James to:
a. use simple inputs like product type, dimensions, and colour
b. run complex calculations to convert the inputs to BOMs and Routings
c. Output accurate information to the manufacturing software/p>
- Set up the ERP software to meet James’ business needs. This includes importing data from his current software systems and connecting it to the CPQ software
- Train James and his team on how to use the new system
Outcomes
- Saving $100,000 per year in unplanned overtime. James now has 6 to 8 weeks of forward visibility into his production schedule, so unplanned overtime is now a thing of the past.
- James has cut his workload by 30 hours per week and staff are happier. The new software system allows staff to self-manage their work most of the time, making them happier and more productive, while freeing James’ time for other things.
- Better and faster onboarding. Having a documented production process has made onboarding and training of new staff significantly faster.
- Quoting can be done in minutes by just about anyone. The CPQ software automatically calculates pricing and prevents you from specifying products that can’t be built or mixed.
- James has reduced waste by $120,000 per year by avoiding loss-making jobs. Not every job is worth taking on at market rates. With proper visibility into job profitability, James now knows which jobs are worth pursuing and which ones to avoid.
- Delegating the bookkeeping is no longer risky, so Steph has been able to step back. The accounting and bookkeeping functions within the ERP system have been locked down, so that critical changes must be approved by James or Steph. Other functions like raising purchase orders are now driven by demand which simplifies them. This has allowed James to safely delegate the bookkeeping work.
Stone Benchtop Fabricator
Small to medium-sized business
Problem
Their business was consistently experiencing unplanned overtime. Jobs were booked 6 to 10 weeks in advance, but their business could only see a few days ahead in their production schedule. By the time the leadership team realised they were behind on a job, they often only had a few days to fix the problem. This meant running extra shifts at night or on weekends, incurring overtime loadings of between 50% and 150% that could not be passed on to the customer. They were frustrated that they were eating into their profit margins, whilst also having to turn away big jobs due to constraints on capacity.
Solution
We sat down and spoke with each member of their leadership team to best understand their processes. Manual production scheduling was identified to be their largest bottleneck, consuming large amounts of time and delivering considerable variances. Our team strategised closely with their team to ensure that a technical solution was customised to their embedded processes. This resulted in a software-based scheduling solution that accounted for all jobs in their production schedule with precise accuracy, allowing the business to better forecast and more accurately predict capacities weeks in advance.
Outcomes
• The scheduling solution was able to prevent most unplanned overtime
• This resulted in a reduction in the costs that were significantly impeding on their profit margins
• The business better understood their capacities
• This meant that if overtime was required in order to get a job done on time, the business knew about it well in advance so was able to pass this cost on to the customer
• The business was able to take on bigger and more profitable jobs
• This resulted in a reduction in the costs that were significantly impeding on their profit margins
• The business better understood their capacities
• This meant that if overtime was required in order to get a job done on time, the business knew about it well in advance so was able to pass this cost on to the customer
• The business was able to take on bigger and more profitable jobs
Stone Benchtop Fabricator
Small to medium-sized business
Problem
Their business was consistently experiencing unplanned overtime. Jobs were booked 6 to 10 weeks in advance, but their business could only see a few days ahead in their production schedule. By the time the leadership team realised they were behind on a job, they often only had a few days to fix the problem. This meant running extra shifts at night or on weekends, incurring overtime loadings of between 50% and 150% that could not be passed on to the customer. They were frustrated that they were eating into their profit margins, whilst also having to turn away big jobs due to constraints on capacity.
Solution
We sat down and spoke with each member of their leadership team to best understand their processes. Manual production scheduling was identified to be their largest bottleneck, consuming large amounts of time and delivering considerable variances. Our team strategised closely with their team to ensure that a technical solution was customised to their embedded processes. This resulted in a software-based scheduling solution that accounted for all jobs in their production schedule with precise accuracy, allowing the business to better forecast and more accurately predict capacities weeks in advance.
Outcomes
• The scheduling solution was able to prevent most unplanned overtime
• This resulted in a reduction in the costs that were significantly impeding on their profit margins
• The business better understood their capacities
• This meant that if overtime was required in order to get a job done on time, the business knew about it well in advance so was able to pass this cost on to the customer
• The business was able to take on bigger and more profitable jobs
• This resulted in a reduction in the costs that were significantly impeding on their profit margins
• The business better understood their capacities
• This meant that if overtime was required in order to get a job done on time, the business knew about it well in advance so was able to pass this cost on to the customer
• The business was able to take on bigger and more profitable jobs
Shop fitter
Family-run business
Problem
The owner was a custom manufacturer who was overwhelmed with too many manual processes. They had previously tried digital solutions but these required them to build the specs for each manufactured item, to make the software work. This process was time-consuming, and often inaccurate, defeating the purpose of this solution. They were also more expensive than what the business could financially justify.
Solution
Our team created a bespoke solution that allowed their existing quoting process to be recreated in software. It did not require a manual entry for each item's specifications, and instead, automatically generated the complex data that their manufacturing system needed to run properly. The customised solution took a highly manual process and turned it into a simple, easy-to-use digital solution, that the owner could comfortably afford.
Outcomes
• The complex quoting process of the business was simplified and automated
• Quotes were done in minutes, reducing hours of administration work each week
• The software was so simple to use, that it was utilised by even lower qualified staff
• Accepted quotes were fed straight into their production schedule as jobs
• The solution freed up management's time, allowing them to grow their team
• Quotes were done in minutes, reducing hours of administration work each week
• The software was so simple to use, that it was utilised by even lower qualified staff
• Accepted quotes were fed straight into their production schedule as jobs
• The solution freed up management's time, allowing them to grow their team