Europe's largest independent supplier of electronic subsystems for missiles and munitions has chosen software to help improve productivity and reduce lean manufacturing costs.
Europe's largest independent supplier of electronic subsystems for missiles and munitions has chosen manufacturing software to help improve productivity and reduce costs in a 'Lean Manufacturing' environment. Mestec announces major 'Tactical and Strategic' software win, to deploy their manufacturing execution system (MES) software at Thales Missile Electronics Ltd (TME). TME, Europe's largest independent supplier of electronic subsystems for missiles and munitions, has chosen the Mestec MES system to help improve productivity and reduce costs in its innovative 'Lean Manufacturing' environment.

' The decision to deploy the Mestec software is both tactical and strategic' said David Barnes, Chief Executive at TME, ' We have calculated that by getting rid of paperwork at a production level and increasing our configuration and control capability, the system should provide a return on investment very quickly.

This first phase will provide us with the experience to ensure that further deployment across the business will be able to realize the long term strategic benefits of MES.' Like most manufacturing organizations TME is under constant pressure to continually improve productivity, and the primary focus is on the shop flfloor to reduce waste and improve quality, whilst still remaining responsive to customer needs.

The Mestec MES system will be used by shop floor, engineering, and management staff: it will provide assembly staff with all instructional information (including work instructions, drawings, engineering updates, etc) as well as collecting essential plant-centric data at source.

MES will replace the current paper-based methodology and will interface to the TME Internal LAN to enable data to be passed to and from other business tools.

To support the project accounting process the system provides for automatic transaction of materials and assemblies on the line directly into the ERP tool (Oracle 11i E-Business Suite).

Also collected is an electronic, comprehensive as-built record set for all assemblies and sub-assemblies produced on the line.

Finally, it collates assembly floor quality and performance data.

Using real-time reporting, it presents decision support information to allow management to make valuable decisions leading to rapid improvement.

' We are in a highly competitive global high tech niche where in order to succeed an organization must be truly world class at all levels.

We are a volume producer with a powerful track record in successfully applying lean manufacturing techniques and involving our suppliers at all stages of the product lifecycle' continues Barnes.

' MES can be seen as the next logical step for us as it creates the kind of visibility, control and discipline we need to continue to be able to demonstrate real production efficiency and manufacturing excellence to our customers.' Added Peter Kipling, TME's Operations Director.

TME has a policy of continuous improvement of both processes and facilities.

The Operations directorate is responsible for the cost effective manufacture of all deliverable product.

A review of working practices highlighted the problems currently seen on the Assembly floor associated with complicated and bulky supporting paperwork.

Not the least of these problems was the increased risk of product damage and non-conformance as a result of the presence of unprotected paperwork in an ESD area or clean room.

The review went on to consider the format of 'the assembly station of the future', and a proposal was accepted for a paperless assembly environment for installation in 2003.

TME uses state of the art ERP in the form of Oracle's E Business Suite and it was important to find an MES system that could both integrate with it and bridge the gap between the enterprise and the shop floor.

' Our previous processes meant that we moved from electronic data to paper, to paper again, then back to electronic - it was easy to see that this was inherently inefficient' said Kipling.

' As part of developing our approach to Lean Manufacturing we quickly came to realise that we needed to focus on further reducing variability in the production process.

We knew that in our increasingly complex production environment adopting a system and process that could ensure we consistently manufacture to the correct build standard would give us real reductions in materials and rework costs.

' States Barnes.

Kipling continues; ' MES complements a Lean environment because both have a strong process base and both have inherent 'cell' structures.' ' Not only do we see MES as offering a route to creating real savings on product cost it will allow us eventually to order direct to line from a far greater proportion of our supply chain creating greater efficiency and further cost savings.' ' From a management perspective the Mestec system provides real time information that will allow us to spot any non conformance early on thus ensuring the impact is minimised and allowing for far greater and quicker trend analysis so that the true nature of any issue can easily and quickly be understood.

We measure customer satisfaction in terms of on-time delivery so it is business critical for us to spot and solve problems early.' Once the overall requirement had been established TME were able to review the MES system in live operation at Thales Sensors in Leicester where it had been running for 18 months.

This enabled the team to evaluate the software in a live manufacturing environment as well as understand the user's perspective on the productivity gains being made.

' Being able to 'see and touch' the system at our facility in Leicester gave us the confidence and belief that it would work for us' concluded Barnes.

' We assessed various alternatives before deciding on Mestec' added Kipling, ' we rejected the idea of an in house solution as we felt it would be unlikely to be sufficiently adaptive and scalable.' ' In the end not only did we feel that the Mestec system was right for us but the approach was flexible and the team did the most important thing for us - they listened to the customer need!' Mestec is a leading UK provider of MES (Manufacturing Execution System) software delivering tangible business benefits to its manufacturing customers.

The Mestec solution is designed specifically for the manual-intensive discrete manufacturing sector.

With a turnover of GBP 35m and 275 staff Thales Missile Electronics (TME) is Europe's largest independent supplier of electronic subsystems for missiles and munitions, selling products and services worldwide.

The core business for TME is the design, development and production of advanced fuzes, sensors and seekers, with additional expertise in battlefield systems, hazard analysis and environmental testing.