1. What was the project?
The Workflow project, to give us more control and oversight on what’s happening in the business
2. Why is this project happening?
Our business has become much more complex and subsequently more difficult to manage. We currently have 223 live projects made up of 6,631 operations. There can be over 100 stages of production on some of our projects which can take over a year to complete. The management of Copper Alloys wanted to have greater control over operational activities in order to enhance on time delivery.
3. Why did you/Copper Alloys get to work on this problem?
I’ve worked at Copper Alloys for 15 years, and worked in various production control functions before becoming IT Systems Manager. Following training in coding and system design, I have been working on developing Workflow since summer 2014. My deep knowledge of the business and its operations have really helped me create a system that enhances capability.
4. How will this affect the customer?
Historically we have relied on individuals managing workloads on spreadsheets, which is time consuming and as soon as they are updated, they are out of date! This causes problems when people want to know exactly where a project is up to and also if a project is slipping, identifying it before it affects the customer delivery date. The purpose of Workflow is to be able to detect issues early enough in the project plan to be able to do something about it and bring the project back on time. It is a learning system that produces timings for every operation, so it should become more accurate in time, and help with quoting accurate lead times as well.
5. How did you approach the challenge?
We wanted to keep product moving around the factory continuously, and to control the quality of each operation, so using a digital solution seemed like the best way to go.
6. How is the client involved? Do you collaborate with them, if so how and why?
Our customers want increasingly precise project plans as well as real-time progress updates. Workflow enables this to happen easily.
United Kingdom