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Vollmann lampholders: Spot on for EDP
The Vollmann company in Gevelsberg
produces lampholders. With around 125 employees its daily output
of about 170,000 lampholders puts it among the leaders in Europe.
Its customers are lighting manufacturers as well as wholesalers.
No less than 1,500 individual parts have to be purchased in order
to manufacture the end product from thermoplast, duroplast, metal
or porcelain. Areas of application are the private and office sector,
but also include large-sized installations such as street lighting,
stadiums and greenhouses. More than 50% of production is exported.
A sophisticated technical assignment
The firm faced a truly complex technical assignment with the system that was to be installed. And real pioneering work lay in store for Messrs Kirschbaum and Spintge who had been assigned the task of preparatory planning.
Mr Kirschbaum (production planning) joined the Vollmann
team of employees to be directly in charge of planning, implementation
and support of the system, while Mr Spintge (product development)
brought his know-how from other companies as well as distinctive
personal ambition to take on demanding goal settings in electronics.
From today's standpoint, both men wonder how the
company was able to cope with the flood of data for so many years
with just the PC system for financial accounting. Besides the commercial
sector, restructuring has in the meantime also taken place in the
construction department, where several network-linked PCs running
AutoCAD are now used instead of drawing boards.
Deficit as an advantage…
The apparent deficit in equipment is today indeed viewed as a fortunate circumstance. For "entry into the field was easier than conversion" - according to Ulrich Spintge now. In fact: a decision could then be taken without having to consider existing equipment or personal preferences.
The list of requirements drawn up after an internal commercial analysis turned out to be correspondingly lacking in frills. Two conditions of prime importance were the "musts":
1. Unix system
2. PPS provision
UNIX, according to Mr Spintge, was favoured for commercial reasons because of: professionalism, openness, flexibility of hardware equipment, compatibility of the software and the large range of programs.
The services of the PPS planning and production
system were the second Vollmann condition. Over and
above this, wide fields of application for practically all functional
areas were called for:
Purchasing
Cost estimating (estimating and actual costing)
EDC = Corporate Data Capture
Accounting
Sales
Manufacturing control
Provisioning
Start phase
Initial contacts were established with suppliers at CeBIT '89 according to the criteria mentioned. The criterion for selecting a partner was also, of course, who promised the optimum performance on the basis of the 200,000.- DM budget.
After initially 5 suppliers made up the narrower choice from a hard core of candidates, a decision was finally taken in favour of ALTOS partner ORGAPLAN in Werl. A choice which, in retrospect, appears to have been the right one - not least for adherence to deadlines, seen rather as to be taken for granted, but also on account of service that effected repairs within 24 hours of system failure, even without a maintenance contract (in the warranty period).
Installation
It was initially assumed that expenditure would be high for costly tailored software. However, in the ORGAPLAN concept it soon turned out that in the majority of cases the requirements could be covered using economical standard software. After a planning period that lasted 6 months the package shown in the box below was installed.
Besides the 12 display screen workplaces and 4 printers, a fax device was integrated in conjunction with text processing as an additional peripheral. This met all needs with regard to convenience and paying for itself.
Introduction
Acceptance by employees during the introduction phase was attributable
particularly to Jörg Kirschbaum's in-house individual training and
persuasion efforts in addition to the instruction through ORGAPLAN.
Hence, after the inevitable start-up problems, the desired was often
expressed for even closer integration into the possibilities of
the system. These were wishes that the user friendliness of the
software was able to live up to.
In the data flow, hierarchical elements have been
done away with to the greatest extent possible. Purchasing is able
to call up marketing data; sales can call on the support of accounting
data, if desired, and has access to disposition information. Above
all, integration is to the fore with the software. These advantages
offset even the initially feared "loss of flexibility". It should
be mentioned here though that spontaneous manual interventions are
still possible within structures that are now defined.
Capacity
The system which has now been running for a good two years appears
well equipped as regards capacity for the time being. The software
for managing high-bay storage of over 4,000 pallets currently under
construction needs to be extended though for inventory control.
A task which the two gentlemen from Vollmann say finally they are
looking forward to with confidence. After all, dependable partners
for advice and qualified equippers are to hand…
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