Making the Right Decisions

Lamond and Murray Ltd is one of the UK’s leading sub-contract gear manufacturers, capable of manufacturing a wide range of Spur, Single Helical, Double Helical Gears and Chain Sprockets up to 2.5 Metres in diameter to both domestic and international customers. In-house design and reverse engineering capability as well as special gearbox manufacture and overhaul complement the offering across several industry sectors. Established in 1921 to manufacture machinery for the mining industry, the company has specialised in gear manufacture since the 1940s. Today, Lamond and Murray operates from a significantly extended factory in Fife. As the company has grown, the business has continued to make significant investment into new machinery and now boasts one of the most comprehensive plant equipment lists in the UK. Lamond and Murray also operates a Quality Management System, approved to ISO 9001:2015, to ensure its customers receive high quality products and services.

Like many manufacturers, Lamond and Murray relied on a paper-based system. However, the management team was able to identify a number of areas that were restricting the company’s ability to perform effectively and grow further. Foremost amongst these were: - Lack of process – with no clear roles, responsibilities and functions within the business, a lot of time was wasted in unnecessary non-value add activities - Management team had to micro-manage all jobs, leaving little time for strategic focus - Majority of decisions were reactive. - No recognised contract review process meant there was a lot of inefficiency. BOMs were not clearly defined so jobs were often interrupted due to lack of available information. - Paper based system meant demonstration of traceability was very cumbersome and meant quality audits were time-consuming and challenging. During an offsite business improvement session, in which the management team mapped out existing processes and highlighted non-value add activities, the team recognised that better defined processes with clear roles and responsibilities were a must and that a digital system should be at the core of Lamond and Murray’s business improvement.

To ensure they chose the best option for Lamond and Murray, the management team evaluated seven ERP systems. From there, two were shortlisted and E-Max was selected for its compatibility with their Make-to-Order process, the ease of movement around the system, the uncluttered and simple to use screens, and, most importantly, the dashboard which the team knew would help them significantly in their task driven approach to each function. Recognising how critical implementation is, the management team set aside time to further define processes, clarify roles and responsibilities and identify what performance data they wanted to capture. E-Max provided a ‘sandpit’ system for the team to ‘play’ in order to increase their confidence and understanding of the system. The final stage was the uploading of all open customer Purchase Orders over a weekend to create Sales Orders and corresponding Works Orders so Lamond and Murray could go live at the start of the week. Operations Director Thomas Lapsley confirmed that “Implementation is the most important phase and the key to success so investing time at this stage pays dividends.”

With a successful implementation, Lamond and Murray is now a much more efficient working environment. Thomas explains: “The real time information provided by E-Max enables informed decisions to be made daily and provides the foundation for ongoing continuous improvement across all business functions.” E-Max has also given Lamond and Murray’s personnel a real opportunity to help shape the company’s future. With critical information stored and clearly visible in E-Max, team members have been able to take on more responsibility, liaise with suppliers, and handle scheduling matters directly with customers. This in turn has freed up the management team to focus on rather than be in the business. And Thomas’ most preferred feature? “Definitely the dashboard as this helps drive activity. It also gives staff a measure of what needs to be done as part of our Short Interval Control and lets us know whether we have had a good or bad day. But the best thing about it is how it has helped us develop a culture of driving our dashboards to ‘0’.”

Since implementing E-Max, Lamond and Murray has: - Improved OTD by over 20%, enabling better management of customer delivery expectations - Reduced setup times and increased efficiency on production floor - Gained clear visibility of its order book and the profitability of each order, for better targeting of opportunities - Made improvements across several key business metrics with better-informed decision making Thomas also notes, “E-Max has provided Lamond and Murray with a solid, fully traceable process with the ability to exercise control and make better informed decisions. It covers every function of a Make-to-Order manufacturing process.”