As the name suggests, Newtech High Speed Turning Ltd is a subcontract machine shop that can turn high-quality parts around within short lead-times, credit to its investment in the latest machine tools and PSL Datatrack’s production control software.
Based on the outskirts of Liverpool, Newtech has the facilities for CNC turning, milling, sliding head-turning, grinding and finishing. However, the subcontracting company found itself conducting ever more paperwork and the necessary office ‘chores’. To free staff members from the essential and often laborious office-based tasks, the manufacturer invested in PSL Datatrack’s production control software. Commenting upon this, Alan Riley from Newtech High Speed Turning Ltd told MTD: “We wish we bought the PSL Datatrack system sooner. We were shown the system around about 10 years ago and we always felt it was for a bigger supplier, and we always put it off, thinking we were too small a business to invest. Eventually, we decided to take the plunge and we got PSL here to demonstrate for us; we bought the system and it’s been fantastic.”
Looking at the system, Alan continues: “For our quoting, we were using Excel Spreadsheets and the Sage accounting package where we were following our sales ledger; and this was difficult to do. Now, quoting is very easy and it can be quickly altered to suit each customer. With the Spreadsheets and Sage, we had to sit down, take our time and renew sheets, orders and restart everything. Now, we can just pull everything together and even small alterations to an existing quote can be done with ease – and this makes a big difference to the business and it frees up a lot of our time. For example, quoting for a batch of 300-off, 500-off or a 1000-off can be edited and done in seconds for each different quantity.”
Making changes on the shop floor
Whilst the PSL Datatrack system is making significant improvements to the streamlining of office responsibilities, the impact on the shop floor is equally impressive. As Alan continues: “We do have a scheduling package on the PSL system, it’s one of the new modules that we have bought. The system tells us what parts we need to put on a certain machine and at a certain time to make sure that we meet our lead times for all of our customers. Before we had the package, we were working off sales ledgers and we were sometimes missing deadlines because we were not sure, as we would always be doing the next job on the list. Now, the PSL Datatrack system tells us what jobs need to be done next, as it refers to the delivery date and not the next person, job or customer on the purchase order list. This has made our lead times a lot slicker.”
“From a pricing perspective, we can improve our prices for the customers as we are working a lot more efficiently. We are getting more jobs through the machine shop and this is making us more profitable.”
From a traceability perspective, Alan tells MTD: “This is very simple. We do our purchasing on the system and from there, we are putting our stock into the system and allocating that stock to a particular job. This brings up all the sheets of information that we need to give our customers complete traceability.”
“When I was first shown the system, the number of features within it was quite overwhelming. As a new customer, it was a daunting prospect and I was used to doing things the ‘old school’ way with Excel Spreadsheets. It initially looked like there was a lot to do and a lot to learn, but when PSL Datatrack came in, they showed us that we didn’t necessarily need every module. They gave us just what we needed to start with elements such as sales, quotes, orders and purchase orders. This allowed us to start with just a few basic packages, and we loved them. So, last year we added more packages and the learning curve has been very easy.”