Glazpart Group Excels with DELMIAWorks

Glazpart Limited was established in 1985 in Banbury England. Glazpart is a dynamic, high technology plastic injection molder with complete in-house facilities from design to production warehousing and sales. Glazpart initially specialized in the construction industry but has quickly developed to supply many other sectors with high quality moldings. Glazpart’s success can be attributed to good business practice, sound management and its well-trained and creative work force. Glazpart has continued to invest in the most advanced technology and machinery and has established an enviable reputation within the industry and a market leading position. Glazpart is ISO certified and has achieved British Board of Agrément certification for many of its products.

The Road to Continuous Improvement

The introduction of a new ERP system was the next phase of Glazpart’s business development program. Glazpart was looking for a system that would give the company:

• Complete integration of business processes and information.
• A more comprehensive Bill of Materials system to facilitate more accurate costing and better production planning and material controls, particularly in management of their secondary operations.
• An improved business partner interface through the use of ecommerce.
• A state-of-the-art warehouse management system using barcode and RF technology to improve stock handling and visibility.

The Selection Process

Glazpart reviewed the ERP marketplace and drew up a short list of four companies including EnterpriseIQ from DELMIAworks (formerly IQMS). This list was narrowed down to two companies based on their experience within the plastics manufacturing industry. From those two solutions, Glazpart chose EnterpriseIQ. “The IQMS software provided a more comprehensive solution that was dedicated to plastics manufacturing,” said Mark Nelson, FD of Glazpart. “Not only does the software have some great features that are specific to our industry, but IQMS understands what a plastics manufacturer does and what our problems are.”

Being a company of vision has enabled Glazpart to continue to compete aggressively in today’s market conditions. Investing in quality equipment, top-notch distribution facilities and following sound manufacturing principles has given Glazpart an excellent reputation in the industry.

“The main aim of the introduction of the ERP solution was to consolidate all of the company information into one integrated database solution,” said Roy Tabb, IT manager. “We also wanted to expand our systems capabilities to give us more control on the shop floor and relate the information that was available to our business critical issues, such as customer service and improving communication within the company, to our customers and suppliers.”

“It all boiled down to having better control of our business critical data. We wanted a single integrated solution that offered centralized, accurate and relevant data that was accessible to everyone in the company. In other words we wanted a system to support our vision,” said Tabb.

Setting the Expectations

“Setting the expectations for the new system was the key to the success of the implementation,” said Nelson. “Glazpart’s expectations were high so achieving all of the objectives were challenging to both the software and the people.”

Goals were set at each stage of the implementation and measured in terms of their completion and level of success. Multiple simulation runs were done so that Glazpart knew the processes would run smoothly and the results met their expectations or exceeded them.

There was a lot of data to collect. Glazpart put Matty Keefe in charge of the data management. His responsibility was to ensure that all manufacturing data was accurate and supported the goals of production efficiency and accurate costing. “The tools in EnterpriseIQ and the fact that the system was designed for plastics manufacturing made it much easier to get our data into the system,” said Keefe. “We tested all types of data on a regular basis to ensure quality; it was essential for what we wanted to achieve.”

The new warehouse was also one of the areas that was key to the company’s future, and it had to be supported by good warehouse management systems. “We had used handheld scanners in the old warehouse but now we needed to get more agile in the warehouse and track inventory throughout the operation from the machines to the shelf with complete auditability,” said Dave Campbell, quality and warehouse manager.

“I can definitely say that EnterpriseIQ has been everything we expected and more,” said Nelson. “We underestimated the benefits we would get from installing a system that was specific to our industry. The capabilities of EnterpriseIQ in the plastics manufacturing industry were a major factor in the success of our implementation.”

Nelson continued, “From the construction of the BOMs and the use of family tooling to the use of real- time information from our machines to the core of the planning systems has meant that the processes flow the way we operate our business. The tightly integrated system has meant that we don’t duplicate any information input at all through the whole process. Even my accounting information comes directly from the source to the P and L, and all the costs are accurate. Month end has become a lot easier.”

“We were so pleased with the improvements on the shop floor that we gave the setters and floor managers handheld devices so that they can see exactly what’s happening,” said Nelson.

The implementation of the manufacturing and distribution parts of the business have been a remarkable success. Glazpart is now embarking on a full CRM implementation. “We have already seen some benefits from the customer communication standpoint. Now we want to get the customer support side of things under control. EnterpriseIQ CRM will enable us to log support calls and follow them right through to returns and corrective action reporting in the quality modules. We can now start to ramp up our return on the investment we made in EnterpriseIQ,” said Tabb.