Plexus Online® helps Detroit tool manager improve efficiency

Keeping up with the Hatebur
The key to success at this tool manager’s plant is keeping the expensive and productive Hatebur forging presses running. The Hateburs go through a lot of tools, and the tool manager’s biggest challenge is keeping enough on hand to meet the demand.

Before the switch to Plexus Online, the company’s tool room, inventory department, engineering department and purchasing department all had different computer systems, none of which provided a real-time view of orders to suppliers. Without the benefit of a single centralized system that Plexus Online provides, the tool manager never knew if his tool data, tool inventory and supplier release information was up to date.

“Before Plexus, we had multiple databases and they didn’t talk to each other,” he said. “We were losing track of our inventory and we got the feeling we were losing up to 10 percent. But there was no way to figure out what was going wrong.”

With Plexus Online® tool-tracking, all departments draw on the same data. The engineering department controls the tool list, tool drawings, tool revision levels, and bills of material. The tool purchasing department creates internal work orders and releases to suppliers for the tools in that same list. No longer does the tool manager have to write himself notes about inputting data from one system to another. No longer does he have to consult four computer screens to figure out the status of an order.

The synthesis of information in one system has enabled the tool manager to streamline the inventory, reduce carrying costs and increase responsiveness to the production needs at the same time.

Plexus Online eliminated many man-hours spent on calculating tool requirements and on inputting the resulting work orders and releases. Integration is the key. Plexus has the current production schedule, the tool bill of materials for each run, the run quantities, and the standard tool life for each tool. Since all the information is real time, the tool manager knows what is on hand and on order. The rest is just math–what used to take hours to calculate, order and verify by phone now takes seconds.

“A lot of people were skeptical that Plexus could do all this, but it has worked very well,” the tool manager said. The system provides much better management of engineering specifications and drawings. The latest revisions for a tool are immediately made available to the tool shop or the outside supplier, and unfilled orders for earlier versions of the tool are red-flagged for reconsideration. All the departments have access to the same engineering drawings because they all share the same database through Plexus Online.

Plexus Online provides a complete system for tracking tools from design to delivery, so its benefits go far beyond inventory management. “Now we have the ability to do a root-cause analysis and drive improvements with data,” he said.

Improved communications

The main reason why the tool manager didn’t have accurate inventory information was the lack of electronic communication between the tool room and the inventory department located just a few hundred feet apart. It was hard to find out the status of orders inside the tool room, and the tool room’s software didn’t follow the tools after they went out the door.

With a single integrated system, the internal challenge became the discipline to make every transaction first in Plexus Online®, then in the physical world. For example, each die-maker must click the “complete” button before physically moving the tools to the next operation. The tool manager acknowledged that at first the strict standards for data entry were hard to meet and caused some delays. “This requires training and discipline,” he said. “One of our challenges is to make it habitual.”

Plexus Online also improved communications with suppliers. As soon as an order is placed for a tool, it becomes visible to the supplier in an online-release system. The supplier provides a commit date and logs any comments for the purchasing department to see. When the shipment is ready, the supplier goes to Plexus Online to print out a shipper. When the shipment is received, the tooling department makes one scan, instead of manually entering receipts into the purchasing system and then manually updating the inventory system.

The old approach to shipping and receiving tools was time-consuming and exposed the company to data entry errors. Whenever a discrepancy was discovered, the tool manager had to make adjustments to bring the inventory back in line. It was a never-ending task.

With Plexus Online, the movement of tools through the tool shop and from suppliers is captured automatically and reflected throughout the entire system. “I’ve posted a sign that says -- Transactions are good, Adjustments are bad,” the tool manager said. “Under the old system, we were constantly making adjustments.”

Troubleshooting

In the past the tool manager reacted to sudden tool shortages by mounting a search or ordering more without determining the cause. Now he spends less time on stopgap measures and more time addressing underlying problems.

Plexus Online enables him to determine if enough tools were ordered and if they were produced and delivered on time. If a defect is detected, he can track individual tools back to the date of fabrication to see if there was a production problem that needs to be addressed. Another Plexus Online module tracks the raw materials used to make an individual tool.

“We get to go after root causes as opposed to putting out fires,” he said.