It’s Tuesday morning and your best customer just called. “One of the components you stamped two years ago was involved in a fatal car crash,” they say. “Here’s the lot number. Can I get a copy of the material certs, along with your inspection records?”
Somebody has lost their life and it’s an awful way to start the day. How will you explain to the buyer that, while you’re proud of your people and the work they do, your software systems could use a little help. In fact, the front office runs on a well-known accounting package, your quality records are stored in an Excel spreadsheet the chief inspector cobbled together five years ago, and the shop floor is still using paper timecards and hand-typed inventory records.
Operating smarter
Sounds familiar? Hopefully not. But according to ERP providers, this level of software sophistication is still all too common in stamping houses. The good news? When it comes to usability, integration and cost, ERP is a much easier pill to swallow than it once was. Furthermore, production floor functions such as machine scheduling and real-time production tracking – once the domain of standalone manufacturing execution systems (MES) – are now integrated directly into many ERP platforms.
“Our offering includes all of the functions that typically fall under the ERP umbrella, such as customer order management, procurement, inventory planning, accounting and finance,” explains Chris Balow, director of product management for Plex by Rockwell Automation. “But it also covers the manufacturing execution layer – the actual production jobs running on the shop floor – along with embedded quality management, asset performance management and preventative maintenance. For lack of a better term, and this isn’t official Plex branding, I like to call it the operating system for a manufacturing plant.”
That said, many shops already have an ERP system that’s working just fine, thank you. What they need are some or all of the features in the latter part of Balow’s statement just now. Fortunately, he says, Plex “put a lot of effort into meeting customers where their needs are” and several years ago broke the system into modules that customers can purchase à la carte.
“That flexibility matters,” he adds. “Some very large manufacturers love our product, but already have enterprise tools like SAP in place. They aren’t going to replace those systems, but they do want our manufacturing execution and quality modules. Modularizing Plex makes that possible.”
Out with the old
While not naming names, the problem with many ERP systems is twofold. First, many of the legacy platforms on the market today began life as accounting packages, with manufacturing and inventory functions bolted on later. When done well, that approach can work. But too often, the result is a disconnect between what’s happening on the production floor and what management sees. Balow calls this integration “from the shop floor to the top floor.”
The second consideration is more recent. Any shop owner or factory manager knows that Industry 4.0 and its little brother the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) are creating countless opportunities to improve efficiency and visibility on the production floor. An MES leverages those opportunities. Whether it’s sensors on stamping presses, PLC-based feedback from coil lines, or real-time scrap and downtime reporting, the flood of data now available to manufacturers can be overwhelming without a system to collect, interpret and act on it.
Balow points to G&W Products of Fairfield, Ohio, a 145-employee job shop that offers a variety of metal fabrication services, stamping among them. The 57-year-old company faced many of the roadblocks discussed thus far, chief among them that its legacy ERP system wasn’t user-friendly and made it difficult to access the critical information needed to make business decisions.
After implementing Plex, G&W saw its on-time delivery rate increase from around mid-80 percent to as high as 98 percent, its inventory decrease by 25 percent and its profitability rise by 12 percent, even though it had recently experienced a dip in sales revenue.
“Like many shops today, they relied on manual, paper-based processes, which made inventory control and traceability a constant struggle,” Balow says. “Identifying capacity restraints and order status was a lengthy, exhausting chore. And, like another customer I recently worked with, they were stuck with the familiar ‘we’ll have to wait until tonight’s MRP [materials requirement planning software] run’ constraint, so common in older ERP systems.
“We don’t have that problem,” he adds. “With Plex, a shop can run MRP whenever they want. It takes about 5 min., maybe a bit longer with deep bills of material or a large number of SKUs. Until that company implemented our software and actually saw it run, I don’t think they believed me. But it’s true and, for many, it’s a gamechanger.”
Purpose built
Kelly Ott knows all about it. The vice president of sales and marketing for ShopEdge Software Inc., she references the phone call discussed at the start of this article, noting that by not having robust traceability and quality management capabilities, shops are setting themselves up for failure.
Quality assurance and material tracking go hand in hand for many of ShopEdge users, particularly those serving automotive and other safety-critical markets. The system links each coil’s heat and lot information through every forming, welding and finishing step, whether done in-house or at an outside processor. That comprehensive production history enables manufacturers to isolate issues and verify compliance with customer specifications quickly.
“End-to-end visibility is huge for our customers,” Ott says. “If a part ever comes back, they can see exactly when they made it, which coil it came from and which operator produced it. That level of detail is critical for anyone supplying OEMs or other regulated industries.”
Of course, this is far from the only capability modern stamping houses require. In addition to those that Plex’s Balow listed earlier, Ott mentions integrated tooling management and seamless electronic data interchange (EDI) form integration as two must-have capabilities for most stamping houses, especially those serving the automotive market.
Yet she’s quick to point out that ShopEdge isn’t “automotive only,” although it does lean favorably in stamping’s direction.
“We’ve been in business since 2002, and around 10 years ago, a lot of our metal stampers, especially those in automotive, started looking to diversify,” she says. “We’ve seen their industries change, and we’ve adapted along with them.”
Today, ShopEdge does a significant amount of work in the appliance industry, for example, and has customers in the South producing a wide range of products, including Club Car components and hair accessories, among others.
“We also serve manufacturers outside traditional stamping, including a customer that cuts and bends tubing for use in the automotive sector,” Ott notes.
Going vertical
Another noticeable change in recent years is the greater degree of vertical integration among fabricators. Shops that once offered only stamping now have laser cutters, press brakes and welding equipment on the floor, and vice versa. As a result, ERP providers have had to respond to a much broader customer wish list than they once did.
Even so, Ott makes no secret of her preference for repetitive manufacturing.
“I was at Fabtech a couple of weeks ago, and there are always people I meet who say, ‘Oh, I make one-offs or runs of half a dozen parts,’” she says. “And I tell them, ‘That’s great, but there are other systems better-suited to that kind of work.’ Once they’ve set up a part in our system – defined the bill of material, established the routing, added the tooling and scheduled the job – it’s clear we’re built for repeat production. That high-volume piece is really important, and it’s the thread that links all of our customers.”
Yet there’s an elephant in the room and it’s shaped like a cloud. While few in the industry would argue against the benefits of Plex and other ERP providers’ cloud-based, software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings, not everyone sees it as the right fit for their needs. Yes, the cloud is ideal for smaller shops with little or no in-house IT support. It’s also easier to deploy, requires no investment in servers or related hardware, and eliminates the headaches of patching and routine system maintenance.
For others, though, it’s a deal breaker. They want to be masters of their own destiny and data, and no argument from the outside will change that. Ott doesn’t take sides. ShopEdge supports both models, serving customers in the cloud as well as those who prefer to keep their systems “on prem.”
Making life easier
In either case, Ott warns potential customers about the perils of integration and interoperability or, rather, the lack thereof.
“Our largest customer has more than 12 locations, and for them, it’s about bringing multiple systems under one roof,” she explains. “They might use one program for EDI, another for quality and in-process inspection, and, because some of their customers require custom labels, a third for barcode design. Even something as simple as gauge calibration might be managed separately. Being able to pull all those functions into one common platform is a huge benefit for them, and that’s something we’re very good at.”
Ott closes by highlighting another area where ShopEdge excels and one that echoes what Plex’s Balow said about the manufacturing execution layer and how it’s reshaping day-to-day life in stamping houses.
“Our software pulls downtime, counter values and other key metrics directly from the machines,” she says. “We then show exactly what the OEE should be, based on standard run rates and actual uptime. After all, if the presses aren’t running, the ship isn’t making money, and that’s true for every one of our customers.
“Bringing that data in and eliminating all the extra standalone systems, whether for EDI, gauge calibration or machine monitoring, is a big deal,” Ott concludes. “A shop is paying maintenance and upgrade costs on each of them, and we can often bring those capabilities back in-house under one package. In the end, it’s about making life easier. One system, one source of truth and a clear return to show for it.”
