Plexus Online - Tooling Case Study


Plexus Online helps Detroit tool manager improve efficiency

The tool manager at a major forging plant outside Detroit used to be very frustrated. As an auto industry supplier, his company was constantly striving to increase speed and reduce costs, but lack of information prevented him from solving many of his inventory problems.

To get an idea of the numbers, one of his presses requires between 50 to 100 distinct forging tools, or details, to run a job, along with multiple instances of the forming tools depending on the run size. The tooling department’s primary mission is to make sure all those tools are available when needed. Without accurate, real-time views of tool inventory on hand or in the pipeline either being built in an internal tool shop or on order at suppliers, the tool manager had to stock excess inventory to avoid unanticipated shortages. Guess work often took the place of informed decisions because he didn’t have enough data.

Daily production schedule changes compounded this problem by focusing his staff on the immediate production demands. Since they couldn’t always trust what their systems were telling them, they had to constantly walk down to the tool shop, check the shelves, and call suppliers to verify commit dates.

That began to change when the tool manager’s company switched to the Plexus Online tool tracking system in the summer of 2004. “Plexus brings logic to many more decisions,” he said. “Now we’re in continuous improvement mode.”

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.

Robust software

Plexus Online provides a higher level of computing power needed to keep pace with the increasing complexity of the forging process. A tool that used to take two or three steps to make can now take 10 steps. The Shop Floor Control module tracks the flow of material from step to step in real time.

Now the tool manager can set parameters to determine which tools will be used first. No longer can the picker pass over the older parts to take the shiniest or newest part. Proper inventory rotation prevents the accumulation of old parts that eventually will have to be scrapped.

Plexus Online also provides a one-touch disposition process for tools coming out of a production run. Mirroring the realities of the physical disposition process, it lists all the tools that were sent to a given press and enables the user to provide a disposition for each. One click of the “Disposition” button now moves some tools back to storage, generates work orders for those that can be salvaged, and scraps those that can’t. It will always take some time to inspect a hundred tools coming out of a press, but Plexus eliminates the need to manually input work orders and update the inventory system.

Plexus Online ensures that tools will be ordered in plenty of time to meet the Hatebur’s needs. The production requirements module allows new orders to be placed very easily to restock inventory at the right time. Plexus Online is seamlessly integrated with the company’s financial systems. Suppliers receive orders sooner and commit to delivery dates. The tool manager can easily check on what is coming, what has arrived and what has already been put into production.

“It used to be we got overdue signals on tools that had already arrived or even been used because we didn’t have a way of tracking parts as they moved from supplier to us. Now we do,” he said.

Continuous improvement

All these improvements didn’t take place overnight. Training personnel and putting new procedures in place took several months. Over time, additional Plexus Online modules will be implemented.

This tool manager has his eye on the Plexus Online module that tracks the usage of individual tools in the production process. That would enable the production crew to pull older tools before they wear out and reorder replacements sooner.

Regardless of what is added to Plexus Online later on, the tool manager believes that a fundamental change has already been achieved.

“Perhaps the biggest improvement is that we’re in continuous improvement mode,” he said. “This isn’t a system that you install and it’s all done. As more information becomes available, we discover new ways to improve. What look like small benefits can reap big rewards.”


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