improved within this factory? I work for an old established engineering company which has just been sold to new owners. The new owners are concerned that the drawing office has limited CAD facilities and there is no integration with the CAM software being used by the manufacturing engineers to produce programs for the CNC machines which are cutting metal. Scrap rates in the workshop are high because CNC programs are unproven and technicians have to make numerous corrections. Within the business there are limited IT facilities and much communication is still through paper-based systems.
The company’s main product line is high pressure pipe couplings for use in the aerospace, instrumentation and oil industries. The parts are machined in large quantities in a range of standard sizes using stainless steel bought in as bar stock. As raw material is used, staff manually update stock levels and reorder as required. Each week the company processes about 500 metres each of 30 mm, 40 mm, 50 mm and 60 mm hexagonal diameter bar to make approximately 35,000 couplings.

The company also offers the facility to produce ‘specials’ if requested by a customer. These are manufactured in the fast response cell, and can be turned around within 36 hours of the first contact from the customer. Fast response orders are taken over the phone and confirmed by email. A drawing of the part is sent by the customer as an attachment to the email. Once the order is completed, the couplings are packaged, bar coded and despatched using a special delivery service.

One problem that has been identified by the management is that when customers phone in to check on the progress of their orders — whether they be standard or fast response — there is no up-to-date information available.

thanks for any help