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Bensons Control Panels

Managing Stock and Costs

Specialist control panel manufacturer, Bensons Control Panels, was being held back by outdated processes.

Stock management was a major concern with each of their low volume, high complexity control panels utilising between 30 – 1500 parts. Tracking job costs was also an issue, with data often not available for long periods, making it difficult to identify and act on problems in a timely manner.

Recognising the need for change, Bensons implemented E-Max ERP and, as a result, have been able to

  • Reduce their workforce by 5%
  • Gain control of stock management and orders
  • Achieve full visibility of costs and track these accurately, in real time
  • Get better control and visibility of day to day activities
  • Standardise and automate more processes across the business
  • Manage spare parts and offsite installations and service

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Bensons Control Panels is a specialist manufacturer that designs and builds high quality bespoke electrical control panels. This family-owned business has been producing control panels from its Normanton, West Yorkshire site since the 1960s, and currently has over 6,000 panels installed across 30 different countries.

Used within a wide range of industries, their custom made electrical and mechanical control panel systems are used to manage manufacturing processes, leisure facilities and building management systems. Bensons is committed to providing top quality products, holding ISO 9001:2015 accreditation, and has invested in an impressive range of equipment on site to ensure any design and manufacturing project can be accomplished.

Bensons' impressive client list includes Heathrow, Gatwick and Manchester airports, Honeywell, TBA, FT Leisure (Center Parcs Longford Forest) and Centrica.

Bensons Control Panels

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E-Max is a good system and offers value for money. Having visibility of costs and being able to track my costs real time and accurately has been hugely helpful.

Matthew Barton
Operations & Technical Director and Co-Owner
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The Challenges

Despite the company’s progression and steady growth, many of the processes in place within Bensons Controls had remained static for years and were holding the company back.

Their low volume, high complexity products require a high degree of manual processing and each has a unique bill of materials (BOMs), with 30 to 1500 parts. Every one of these parts is needed in order to manufacture, test and deliver the finished control panel and not having clear visibility of stock in real time was a serious issue to Bensons. Spreadsheets were being used across the business but were not linked, making it near impossible to get an accurate view of materials.

“We knew that we needed to get a grip on our stock, know what’s on order, where it is and how much we’ve got,” explained Matthew Barton, Operations & Technical Director and co-owner of Bensons Control Panels.

Another major challenge the company faced was not being able to calculate job costs in a timely fashion.

“In terms of how much time was being spent on a job, that was calculated and recorded but you didn’t typically have that information until several days after the job had gone out of the building, so if there were problems nobody could ever remember what the problem was,” Matthew noted.

Once these key issues were identified, Bensons Controls began to explore various solutions. “We knew we had options of discrete packages, for time capture, stock management and stock ordering but you’ve still got that integration challenge. Or you can go and buy a proper ERP solution in which someone has done all the integration for you and then you are just dealing with one system, one company and one licencing cost.”
 

Bensons Controls chose to go with an ERP solution.

Matthew advised: “We wanted something that's scalable so, as we grow the company, we don't want to have to employ more and more people to maintain more and more spreadsheets.”

Bensons was very clear on what was to be achieved with an ERP system. The priority goals were to:

  • Reduce material shortages by making sure component procurement is aligned to the bill of materials
  • Optimise stockholding to reveal time stock management to prevent holding too much stock
  • Improve the speed and accuracy of as built panel costs
  • Improve the efficiency and visibility of production management through improved scheduling
  • Have a single source of all information

“We looked at a number of different options for ERP solutions and felt that E-Max was the best fit for us in terms of where we were coming from, the functionality that we needed, the customisation that E-Max offers and also from a value for money perspective.”

The Solution

The Benefits

Whilst E-Max ERP has enabled Bensons to make solid progress on the above goals, even in challenging pandemic times, there have been other benefits. Matthew outlined the most significant of these:

“The Shop Floor Data Capture piece from E-Max was really important as now all my guys can clock onto a job when they are working on it. It means I can now sit at my screen and know exactly what's going on with any job on the shop floor without having to have six conversations.”

“I can also find problems sooner. The challenge we've got now is that the global supply chain is ’challenging’, and stock lead times have gone out the window, so we've used the functionality of E-Max quite considerably to help get us through. Having all the reorder points and reorder quantities and being able to play around with those quite easily is helping us manage the ever-increasing lead times on componentry. It was good to hear one of our procurement guys comment, ‘We'd never have been able to do this without E-Max’ and recognise the value it was bringing.”

“A key member of our team unfortunately passed away during the pandemic, E-Max gave us business continuity during this difficult time. A robust system that isn't dependent upon individuals but can actually be used by anyone in the business is a considerable benefit from a resilience perspective.”

“With E-Max we've got a tool which allows us to distribute workload, It allows us to get around a bottleneck associated with releasing jobs to production by linking to our CAD system and giving responsibility to our design engineers for preparing and releasing the BOM. E-Max also provides a platform that allows multiple people to contribute to the business effectiveness and business efficiencies. In turn, that's made sure our team better understand all the materials and the components that we use. Those are substantial benefits.”
 

Bensons Panels implemented E-Max ERP just prior to the start of the pandemic. Despite the challenging times, as a result of E-Max, Bensons has been able to:

  • Reduce their workforce by 5%
  • Gain control of stock management and orders
  • Achieve full visibility of costs and track these accurately, in real time
  • Get better control and visibility of day to day activities
  • Standardise and automate more processes across the business
  • Manage spare parts and offsite installations and service
Summing up his experience with E-Max, Matthew noted, “E-Max is a good system and offers value for money. Having visibility of costs and being able to track my costs real time and accurately has been hugely helpful.”
 

The Results

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