Collaborating for a smooth software transition

With the help of Seiki Systems’ software, Leeds-based Kirkstall Precision Engineering has updated its production management system with a modern replacement.

Co-owned by John Thornton and Tim Buckley and founded in 1988, Kirkstall is a thriving subcontract machine shop specialising in the manufacture of bespoke instruments, components and fully functional assemblies for the medical, veterinary, textile and oil industries.

Supplying to such a diverse range of industries and particularly key OEMs within the medical industry requires an agile approach whilst retaining the highest levels of quality and responsiveness.

As well as the design complexity and use of high value materials that need to stand up to repeated cleaning/sterilisation, orders tend to come in smaller batches of 5-10 with tight delivery deadlines. At times there can be over 700-800 work orders on the system, comprising anywhere between 5 and 500 operations to make up an assembly. Managing this volume and variety of work, whilst maintaining the flexibility to stay responsive to new orders, provides some scheduling challenges.

Prior to investing in Seiki advanced planning and scheduling software with WIP booking and Electronic Work Queues, Kirkstall’s primary production management system was SOAP – a bespoke system developed by Mr Buckley to manage all resources, BOMs and routings. It had been effectively supporting order processing for nearly eight years, however, mindful of the inherent risks of relying solely on an in-house developed system, specifically the demands of supporting and future proofing it, the management team was keen to explore specialist solutions designed for manufacturing environments that could meet their current and future requirements.

Finding capacity

With such a fast changing and high volume order book, one of the primary planning challenges for production manager Steve Wilson was having visibility of true capacity. Mr Wilson says: “SOAP could tell us how many hours would be needed for a new job but if someone asked what the effect would be on our current live or planned workload it was almost impossible to calculate accurately and certainly not quickly.

“As a business we were also keen to have more live information and feedback from the shopfloor to give us that much more confidence in being able to meet customer demands. At the end of the day we are a service provider and customer satisfaction is our primary concern.”

Mr Buckley and Mr Thornton decided early on that one of the keys to the successful adoption of any new system was getting buy-in from the whole team, so the selection process involved a cross-departmental group of six people. They looked at three or four different systems before investing in a consultancy day from Seiki to deliver a proof of concept demonstration using real data from SOAP. Mr Wilson explains: “Seeing the Seiki system working with our data really helped us to visualise and understand how it would fit within our business. It gave us the confidence to go ahead with the investment.”

Another key strength of the Seiki solution was its flexibility and suitability for the production environment: “It was obvious from the outset that the Seiki software was designed for a manufacturing application and not something that had been adapted to fit the purpose,” Mr Wilson affirms.

“The core ‘out-of-the-box’ functionality was going to do the job we wanted it to do without needing to buy multiple add-ons to satisfy our requirements. But we also knew that when we want to grow the system, we’d be able to do that with Seiki.”

Data exchange challenges

In practical terms, this involved installing and configuring the Seiki Core Scheduler software with a bi-directional interface to SOAP to automate the data exchange between the two systems. Once a day all the routing information required for scheduling is exported from SOAP to the Seiki Scheduler. Every two hours the interface imports works order status information from Seiki to SOAP to update the master routing with the actual production times.

This information is taken directly from the shopfloor where operators use Seiki Electronic Work Queue and Shop Floor Data Collection software connected to 30 resources and delivered via four touchscreen PCs to view a prioritised list of jobs queued to the machine and to log the start, completion and part count of each operation to support Work in Progress (WIP) booking and tracking.

The installation took place over four days, during which time the Seiki engineer worked closely with the Kirkstall team to refine the data exchange between the two systems and to strike a balance between established processes and a new way of working.

Mr Wilson explains: “With SOAP we have a system that is an exact reflection of how we’ve worked for the past eight years. Introducing any new methods was always going to be a challenge but it was one that we were ready for. We knew we were investing in proven and best practices; we weren’t just buying a product – we were buying into a support network, meaning we could benefit from our supplier’s and their users’ experience.”

A familiar interface

Going live was made easier by the familiarity and uncomplicated functionality of the system. The graphical user interface gives a highly visual view of everything in real time. Simple traffic light style colour coding, combined with fast and simple filtering, shows the information needed quickly.

This information was already available in SOAP but to extract it from that system required closer interrogation and writing it down – a much more laborious process. Mr Wilson adds: “You just want to be able to pick something up and to run with it. It enabled me to do what I was already doing but a lot faster.”

And it was the speed of the system the provided the first most noticeable benefit. Manually generating production schedules was a job that previously took hours and minutes. With the Seiki scheduling software it now took seconds, leaving Mr Wilson to best describe the system as a ‘number cruncher’.

He continues: “I can have the answer I need on the screen almost instantly which makes me ask more questions. It keeps me busier exploring ideas, being more creative and it frees up my time to do other jobs.”

This ability to ‘number crunch’ provides much greater manoeuvrability, particularly when dealing with last minute customer orders that need to be incorporated into the schedule. Previously, one of the biggest challenges was knowing capacity to be able to respond positively to customer demand. SOAP was able to calculate the time required to complete a job but it couldn’t calculate the effect of adding any new jobs to the existing live schedule.

Without visibility of how every job interacted with each other and therefore the consequences of any changes, it was hard to make informed decisions. The Seiki software changed that by enabling ‘what-if’ scenarios to be run without affecting the live schedule. It made it possible to graphically see the impact of adding new work to the expected delivery dates of existing jobs and then, using drag and drop, easily move jobs around the planning board to try and achieve the most optimal plan that keeps all customers happy.

Digital scheduling

As a finite capacity system the Seiki Scheduler works to actual plant capacity and allows for closer refinement of the plan by taking into account variables that will affect the actual capacity and time required to complete a job.

Mr Wilson uses the Workspeed efficiency feature to factor the efficiency of individual resources into the plan: “By setting a factor of 85% efficiency we’re not overpromising or being unrealistic about what is achievable on that resource for that day.”

Defining resources in the system isn’t limited to machines – for Kirkstall first article inspection is a critical process that can take anything up to 24 hours to complete. If this otherwise potentially hidden time and resource requirement isn’t also accounted for when scheduling, it’s almost impossible to get a realistic or accurate planned completion date as Mr Wilson explains.

“You’ve really got to think of all the variables that you need to the Scheduler to manage so that you can build the entire process into the plan. For one job, before the 2,500 parts could go into inspection each one had to be manually unwrapped from its packaging. You can imagine the potential error we would be building into the whole schedule if we hadn’t factored this in. But once they are in the system as resources we have a repeatable process.”

Each machine now also has an accurate, prioritised work-to-list that is generated directly from the Scheduler, so operators can see not just what job needs to be done and when, but what work is coming down the line. This integrated, collaborative approach ensures that the operators are helping to generate a live view of work in progress by booking on and off jobs in real time. By giving everyone visibility and a means of feeding back their knowledge it empowers people to make a real, valuable contribution.

Mr Wilson reveals there is another benefit to the live nature of the system: “It’s always working. When I leave for the day there’s another 14 hours of production taking place and when I come in the morning I can see immediately what has happened on the night shift. The system is factual, dependable and repeatable and I never feel like I’m playing catch up. I always have an exact picture of where all my jobs are and can share this information easily with the team. I can also drive suppliers to meet their deadlines if the system is telling me that we are at risk of running late on a job.”

Looking to the future, Kirkstall anticipates much more to come from its investment and collaboration with Seiki. To expand the system and introduce new methods of working is a continuous improvement process.

As the system champion, Mr Wilson is keenly aware of the importance of getting buy-in from the team and for everyone to trust and use the system correctly at each stage in this journey: “The ability to take a progressive approach was one of the benefits of the Seiki system. We needed a supplier that could support us as we continue to grow and evolve; as well as guide us with the latest, best practice solutions.”

Seiki Systems www.seikisystems.co.uk

Kirkstall Precision Engineering www.kirkstallprecision.co.uk