Established in 1937, Tyneside Safety Glass is the largest independent company of its type in the UK and one of Europe’s leading manufacturers of glass products for the motor sport, agricultural, construction and defense industries. Through its onsite manufacturing facilities and focus on research, development and manufacturing, Tyneside is able to guarantee that its bespoke glass is of the highest quality.
After analyzing Tyneside’s needs, Syspro recommended a phased approach to implementing the fully integrated ERP solution. Syspro went live in August 2006 and in just over a year the system, in conjunction with the implementation of lean manufacturing techniques, has made a huge difference. A major benefit has been a reduction in stock holding of more than 25%.
Syspro is used across all three of Tyneside’s production facilities. Each site is linked using a Virtual Private Network which enables real-time data communications and allows the management team to access accurate information whenever required.
Initially, Tyneside implemented Syspro’s Bill of Materials, Inventory, Work in Progress, Purchasing, Sales Order, Financial and Payroll modules. These are providing better, easily accessible management information collected from diverse departments throughout the business.
The current phase involves the implementation of the Shopfloor Data Capture module, which uses barcode scanning to provide full traceability of products right back to raw materials. This level of traceability comes into its own should there be a need to investigate the failure of a product in the field. An important benefit is the ability to know exactly what materials were used to manufacture each product, which would have been extremely difficult prior to implementing Syspro.
In addition, this level of management information as well as the increases in efficiency and productivity are allowing Tyneside Safety Glass to expand its business using the existing workforce. There is no longer a need to struggle with duplicated data sources, many of which were paper records. The Syspro solution completely integrates each operation.
The future looks positive for Tyneside Safety Glass and Syspro will play an important role in underpinning the company’s progress. Further implementation plans include automating Purchase Order generation for stock items, Engineering Control for tighter management of product development, and MRP to enable the company to get a further firm grip on planning. Tyneside Safety Glass will also implement Syspro’s EDI modules to communicate electronically with its major customers and suppliers.
Tyneside is realizing huge benefits from its phased implementation of Syspro. The company has made a significant leap forward in terms of efficiencies and productivity right across its three production sites thanks to a combination of Syspro ERP, a £5 million investment in new machinery, lean manufacturing techniques and Kaizen management improvements.
“Shopfloor Data Capture gives us greater insights across the three manufacturing sites. We can drill down into our data, improve our shopfloor operations and identify jobs with the highest reject levels, enabling us to amend procedures and reduce faults.”
— Jon Heeley, Project Manager, Tyneside Safety Glass
Tyneside needed to gain greater visibility of its operations and integrate all its processes, from production through to accounts. This would give the management team full access to critical, real-time information. Tyneside’s existing business systems primarily managed sales order processing and could not meet this need. Furthermore, the legacy system did not offer any scope for improvement.
After a thorough investigation of the ERP market, Tyneside selected a fully integrated Syspro solution which is used across all three of its production facilities. Each site is linked via a Virtual Private Network which enables real-time data communications and allows the management team to access accurate information whenever required.
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