OVERVIEW
Established in 1979, Esher-based baked products manufacturer The Cookie Man supplies supermarkets such as Co-op, Tesco, Sainsbury, Morrison and Waitrose. It‟s a highly competitive industry, driven by a continual need to improve productivity, cut costs, and reduce wastage.
In late 2010, The Cookie Man responded by launching an initiative to drive manufacturing efficiency, greater visibility, control and lean processes on the manufacturing shop floor. To achieve this, the company decided that it would augment its Lakeview ERP system—with which it was otherwise delighted—with a specialist „add on‟ package focused upon providing detailed management and visibility for factory-centric operations.
“As an ERP system, Lakeview did everything we wanted,” says The Cookie Man‟s general manager Jayson Scheib. “But we needed to monitor manufacturing operations at a more granular level of detail in order to drive manufacturing performance higher.”
Download the full story about Cookie Man’s Manufacturing success working in partnership with Lakeview ERP and Mestec
CHALLENGE
And to try to get the desired level of visibility, the business had become reliant on a number of spreadsheets and paper-based systems, he explains. By 2010, Cookie Man had outgrown these dated methods which were onerous to manage, not to mention the frequent re-keying of data.
“We would spend hours entering data into paper forms, and then copying the information into the ERP system, checking records and trying to resolve conflicts and errors,” says Charles McIntosh, The Cookie Man‟s supply chain manager.
The business needed visibility of real-time shop-floor data to support lean activities to continue to drive cost out of the manufacturing process.
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Visit: www.mestec.net/Download/TheCookieManCaseStudy.pdf
About Mestec’s Smart Box solution
A touch screen and barcode based factory focused solution, Mestec’s Manufacturing Smart Box system is designed to track, trace and report on key aspects of the entire production process … from goods receipt to despatch.
What’s more, the Mestec Manufacturing Smart Box has been designed from the ground up to complement existing ERP systems, and not to replace ERP functionality.
The Manufacturing Smart Box interface is a simple touch screen configured for a specific set of factory activities. Its simplicity means that minimal training is needed. Typically, the Mestec Manufacturing Smart Box system is specified, chosen and implemented by manufacturing management, and not the IT department.
The Manufacturing Smart Box is flexible and can be rapidly deployed into even complex and changing environments. This makes it ideal as an ERP companion, capturing key production information in real time whilst seamlessly interfacing to the corresponding company information systems.
With a typical payback of two months to one year, Mestec’s Manufacturing Smart Box systems are affordably-priced, and available on either a low-cost monthly subscription, or through one-time perpetual licences. And a typical initial improvement project delivers results in days or weeks, not months or years.
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Case study written by: Mestec
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In the UK there seems to be a false consensus over the state of the manufacturing industry. The dominant social narrative would have us believe that manufacturing is either dying or already dead, that we are now a nation of service providers. But to paraphrase Mark Twain: “News of the death of manufacturing has been greatly exaggerated.’
