Imagine the scene - workers standing on the foundry floor manually writing by hand in their worst penmanship production and scrap composed of part numbers, quantities, process steps, and scrap reasons on pieces of paper. Then, at the end of the day, the supervisor collects all of the pieces of paper and takes them to the front office for data input the next morning. As the supervisor is gathering up the papers, one accidentally gets coffee spilled on it and can no longer be read and another production sheet just floats away into the abyss of the foundry unbeknown to the supervisor.
The next morning the person responsible for data entry into the spreadsheet misreads ten good pieces for 100 pieces and enters 100 pieces accordingly and then enters 50 pieces of scrap when it should have been five pieces. Of course, the data entry person is totally unaware that two pieces of production reporting are missing.
The foundry management is always at a loss as to why inventory is incorrect, production numbers are never correct, scrap is so high, scheduling the operations is next to impossible, and customer orders are never on time, and the on-time delivery performance is pitiful.
Unfortunately, this is the real world of many global metal casters who don’t utilise the latest tools of the trade. A robust computer system, such as that from Synchro ERP, can offer so many improvements in the production flow and can take the foundry operations from being ‘reactive’ to being ‘proactive’. At the end of the day, the profit and loss of any foundry is measured by what happens not in the front office, but on the foundry floor. Having control of the foundry operations is vital to the long-term profitability of a foundry. However, to have control of the operations, the foundry management must have an accurate picture of what is really happening and why it is happening. The leaders of the foundry must be able to climb to the highest point in the foundry, survey the scene, and make good decisions on what they see. With the Synchro ERP software, the leaders and managers of the foundry can truly visualise and, more importantly, understand how all of the operations fit together.
After a TQM analysis of their operations, the leadership shouted out: “throw out the paper and get a Synchro ERP APP” and all the managers shouted back: “but we just ordered more paper”. In the spirit of Stephen Covey, this is the difference between leadership and management.
Synchro ERP will be ramping up an APP for Android and Apple tablets that will allow foundries, in real time, to enter information accurately into the system. The data entry will not just be limited to production and scrap, but will also be expanded to other areas of the foundry operations such as material receipts, time collection, outside service receipts, and much more.
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web: www.synchroerp.com