SPONSORED BY 123 INSIGHT
REBOOTED & REPURPOSED
How manufacturers have coped – and flourished – during the worst
pandemic in a century
CONTRIBUTOR 123 INSIGHT
When we were all raising glasses on December
31, 2019, none of us could have foreseen that
we would spend the second quarter of this year
in lockdown and that business would grind to
a halt with no prospect of a rerurn to any sort
of normality for the near future. However, the
manufacturing sector is a resourceful breed and there are
many stories where companies have created opportunities
from adversity, with the 123insight manufacturing system often
providing the flexible infrastructure required to deliver.
When the lockdown and subsequent furlough scheme
were announced in March 2020, companies had to change
the way they operated overnight. A side effect of furloughing
staff was the furloughing of their knowledge. Those without
a manufacturing system would have been reliant on the
collection of home-grown spreadsheets and systems
that each department had developed over time.
Conversely, 123insight users have benefited from
many processes following a common pattern and
user interface.
123 Insight’s subscription business model
also allowed companies to make further
short-term savings, by reducing the number
of licences used per month. “Traditional
software suppliers would still be charging for
maintenance, consultancy, support and updates,
but 123insight users pay a simple per-licence
subscription per month, which can be increased or
decreased at any time,” says Simon Badger, MD of 123
Insight Ltd (pictured, inset). “This allowed companies that found
themselves rapidly contracting to immediately reduce their
licence count to meet their smaller-sized workforce, but still
have full functionality and support.”
Conversely, in some areas 123 Insight saw an increase in
licence take-up via 123mobile. This iOS/Android app allows
staff to easily maintain social distancing, using tablet devices
to perform stores and shop floor functions such as checking
stock or booking on/off of a job. One company that took
advantage of this was Butser Rubber, based in Liss, Hampshire.
Although all administration staff are working remotely, they
still have complete visibility of stock and production through
123insight via VPN. Furthermore, some PC terminals used for
stock control or logging of shop floor operations have been
removed, replaced with tablet-based 123mobile licences.
Charlie Easton, operations manager explains: “Overall, we’ve
actually increased our 123insight licence count. Staff have been
provided with their own tablets, so no-one else touches them
and they don’t have to be regularly sanitised.
We’ve also been able to reclaim space on the
shopfloor where the PCs used to be, which
gives staff more room for social distancing,
reducing movement on the shopfloor and
allows us to make better utilisation of the
space in general. Another benefit is that staff
also clock on when they arrive and off when
they leave, so we can immediately see who is
in the building.”
Use of barcodes has also expanded, with
barcode readers now set to ‘always scan’ – staff
simply hold the paperwork in front of the reader
for contactless logging of processes.
Butser Rubber were involved with the push
for ventilator parts, setting up a PC with
123insight and a dedicated email
account installed near their rapid
prototyping equipment. Designs
would arrive and immediately
be associated with newlycreated
parts and bill of
materials within 123insight,
providing full traceability from
CAD file to finished part. “We
were going from receiving
drawings through to having
finished prototypes in 90 minutes,
so the ability to process this rapidly in
123insight whilst still maintaining traceability
was extremely useful,” notes Easton. They had
already taken advantage of the 123bi business
analytics tool to deliver reports, dashboards and
data export, but have relied on it more during
the pandemic, as staff can quickly retrieve and
analyse data through the web browser.
Yacht canopy manufacturers Tecsew
anticipated that they would be hit hard by the
downturn and immediately looked at where
there might be manufacturing opportunities.
Thinking about how they would provide a safer
working environment for their own staff, they
came up with the idea of the ‘Sneeze Guard’
mobile room divider, repurposing some of the
materials used within their current product
range. In addition, they devised a ‘Sneeze
Guard’ Desk Screen, Mobile Room Divider
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