Trust or bust

Established more than sixty years ago, CNC precision turning subcontractor, Witon Engineering is registered to ISO9001:2000 and TS 16949 and operates a 'ship to line' service with full traceability.

With an impressive investment in multi-spindle lathes, the company offers short leadtimes with one hit machining and is able to provide an economic service for large and small batch quantities requiring very close tolerances. The company has grown rapidly in the past four years – helped by the installation of PSL's DataTrack software.

Following a previous implementation of a competitor manufacturing software package, Witon became disappointed with issues of inflexibility and poor service and ultimately became disillusioned with the objective of running the business through a manufacturing-based system. This led to a reappraisal of its business processes four years ago and as part of this process, Witon looked at the alternative options available.

After a thorough evaluation, Witon Engineering turned to PSL and its initial concerns were quickly overcome after a fast implementation that made an immediate difference. Soon after installation, Witon realised that DataTrack could provide a number of operational benefits to the company. The system facilitated much more effective communication between all elements of the business which ultimately led to cost savings through streamlining operations. An additional benefit was greater control over stock and materials.

A problem with the previous manufacturing software had been that staff found it complicated in use and difficult to extract reliable information. As a result the package was never fully utilised. With DataTrack, however, once the initial installation was complete everyone involved felt comfortable with its intuitive interface and confident in its abilities.

A decision was subsequently made to quickly add the scheduling module and barcoded shopfloor data collection concurrently and now the company claims that production scheduling is now possible in a fraction of the time it used to take and the whole operation is more accurate, less wasteful and more efficient.

A major benefit of using DataTrack has been the collaborative aspect of the relationship between Witon and PSL, and this has led to software changes being made that have been of direct benefit to Witon. “Datatrack has overcome all our problems of inflexibility and mistrust,” enthuses director, Howard Sheldon. “We are now able to talk directly to the developers of Datatrack at any time and get immediate and appropriate service whenever we need it.”

PSL Datatrack
www.psldatatrack.com