Case Study
GA Sliding Head provide individual subcontract engineering services, from machining to coating through to full turnkey supply and testing, to a local and international customer base. Struggling with the accounts-based software package they were using across the company, the management team knew it would be very difficult to achieve their ambitious growth targets unless they could find a system to support and control their manufacturing and production processes.
After implementing E-Max software, the company has been able to improve performance and manage their fast growth. Of particular benefit to GA Sliding Head has been E-Max’s ability to grow with them whilst continuing to enhance the software’s functionality to ensure their requirements are met. E-Max’s quality control functionality has supported GA Sliding Head’s continuous improvement culture and has helped to further improve their customer satisfaction and quality.
Since the implementation of E-Max, GA Sliding Head has increased sales from £1m per annum to over £3m pa. E-Max has also provided them with a platform to cope with at least another 100% growth.
About the Client
GA Sliding Head has been operating at the cutting edge of technology for over 20 years, providing individual subcontract services from machining to coating through to full turnkey supply and testing. Providing integrated manufacturing solutions to their customers, both on-shore and off-shore, the company has a broad customer base that ranges from small local manufacturers through to large multinational companies.
GA Sliding Head have shown a genuine commitment to providing first class customer service and put a real emphasis on open and honest communication to ensure they deliver complete customer satisfaction in every project. The manufactured components they produce are synonymous with quality and reliability.
In 2015, GA Sliding Head joined the Pryme Group, which has provided them a solid platform for further growth.
The Challenges
Back in 1998 , GA Sliding Head faced a number of challenges that were not (and are still not) uncommon in the manufacturing and engineering SME sector. The company was using Sage Line 100 , a DOS based system which they found to be very slow and restrictive. The system could not be integrated with Windows based applications and offered very little scope for GA Sliding Head to move forward. Steve Bruce, GA Sliding Head’s General Manager, described it as being “essentially an accounts package with a manufacturing bolt on, rather than the other way around”, when GA Sliding Head really required a powerful and industry specific production control system. The company had ambitious growth targets and felt that Sage Line 100 was unable to keep up with the accelerated growth of their business.
The key issues GA Sliding Head faced were:
- no clear visibility of their production floor and what was coming in/going out
- difficult to record quality concerns and non-conformances
- the incumbent software had a limited shelf life and many restrictions
The Solution
GA Sliding Head went into the market to source a solution that would support and help achieve their growth objectives. Their sister company, GA Scotland, had already started using E-Max and strongly recommended it to GA Sliding Head. After seeing E-Max in operation, the management team were impressed by how easy it was to use and the competitive cost of the system. Even back in 1998, E-Max was a functionality rich system, offering significantly more features than other systems in the market and GA Sliding Head’s management team could see how these features would benefit them.
One of the main advantages of E-Max and a key requirement for GA Sliding Head and their customers was the ability to track and record material movements from supplier through to customer. Steve explained that “The simplicity of material traceability in E-Max and its archiving of the information is a significant benefit to not just us at GA but to our customers across various key sectors including Medical, Oil & Gas and Aerospace.”
Having decided to go with E-Max, GA Sliding Head were pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to implement across the company with Steve noting that “implementation was relatively straightforward.”
The Benefits
GA Sliding Head have enjoyed many benefits in using E-Max but Steve believes the biggest benefit has been E-Max’s ability to grow with his company: “Over the years, we have stretched the system and helped with the development of it.” Their feedback, along with input from our other customers, has ensured that E-Max is, and will continue to be, a manufacturing ERP system with MRP at its very core, not a generic system with a manufacturing bolt-on. We will continue to work in consultation with our customers to ensure that our software meets their needs.
E-Max has made the flow of Sales Orders to Parts Out much easier to for GA Sliding Head to manage. The functionality within the system has streamlined GA’s order fulfilment process and enabled them to handle a greater number of orders – a vital requirement for any company seeking to increase their growth. E-Max’s Shop Floor Data Collection (SFDC) has provided greater transparency on the shop floor, enabling the management and production teams to have real-time progress reports and to identify where efficiencies can be made. Over the years, the company has also been able to build a continuous improvement culture based on the data and information available from E-Max.
Other benefits GA Sliding Head rate highly include the E-Max dashboard, with Steve stating “Lots of my guys like the dashboard. It looks good on their screens and I see them using it all the time.” The E-Max dashboard is fully customisable and allows every employee within a company to display the data that is most relevant to them, ie their KPIs, so they can focus on what’s important to their role.
GA place a huge emphasis on customer satisfaction and quality and use the Non-Conformance Reports (NCRs) in E-Max to support their culture of continuous improvement. Steve explains “Many companies use NCRS as a negative tool to beat people up. Unlike them, we use the NCRs as a positive tool to improve our business. We generate lots of NCRS to act as a central database of small things we need to improve on so we can improve as a team.”
The Results
Since the implementation of E-Max, GA Sliding Head has increased sales from £1m per annum to over £3m pa. E-Max has also provided them with a platform to cope with at least another 100% growth.
Steve acknowledges that GA Sliding Head have improved their performance significantly during the time they have been using E-Max software and that E-Max has been instrumental in this:
“The Sales Order/Work Order/Shop Floor Data Collection and delivery functions are the key drivers in our business. By simplifying and speeding up these, and other, processes, E-Max has given us the ability to cope with fast business growth and positions us well for managing growth in the future.”
For more information on how E-Max has helped other clients achieve their goals, read more of our case studies. If you’d like to find out how E-Max can help your business, why not give us a call on 0808 109 2035, email us or schedule a free, no obligation demo of E-Max ERP.
