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Connaught
Electronics Ltd
8
. Outcome
Although the full scope of the project hast yet to be fully
implemented, the planning stages for each step are now fully
detailed. With the hiring in March 2002 of an IT & eBusiness
Manager the company now has the best industry expertise to manage
their eBusiness implementation. Deployment of all systems is
scheduled for the end of 2002.
Benefit for Customers
The traceability project has helped CEL to secure a significant
new contract. Every step of the production process can now be
monitored, logged and retraced by both the customer and CEL.
This degree of control over the production life cycle increases
customer confidence in CEL's ability to deliver products and
will help secure more contracts. Now in the instance of a warranty
issue or a product recall, CEL are able to pin point exactly
when the product was produced as well as serial numbers of all
similar items and their components. This information enables
CEL to respond quickly by providing concise and accurate information
to their customers.
CEL,
rising to the challenge, and as part of its eBusiness project,
implemented a state of the art bar-coding and traceability system.
Individual reels and packages of components were uniquely identified
during the booking-in process. Then these unique identifiers
were used to track which components had made up which products.
The product item was then tracked through both the remainder
of the manufacturing process and dispatching. The result is
that CEL was able to report, in real time, not only which customer
received which individual item, but also the source and history
of each component used to manufacturer the item. This was a
major achievement that placed CEL at the forefront of such capabilities
within the industry.
The
data collected in the traceability database provides accurate
figures on build rates, quality measures and machine performance.
This report can be viewed by supervisors in a graphic format,
a substantial improvement on trawling through reams of paper.
The
implementation of the EPR system will allow further efficiencies
in communications between suppliers and customers. The automation
of many processes will reduce errors and allow CEL to be more
responsive to customer demands.
Benefits for the Company
Initial testing of the traceability system improved error
detection as each process step queries that the product was
recorded at the previous one.
This
sort of innovation is progressive within this industry. CEL
are now able to remain ahead of the competition by offering
such a service.
Once
the bar coding system is fully activated, the number of man
hours required to manually progress raw materials and products
through production, will be greatly reduced. This decrease in
workload has a twofold benefit:
- decreasing
overheads and increasing opportunity to win new business
- allows
staff to engage in more value add activities within the
operation
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