Who is Precision Sheet Metal Solutions?

Precision Sheet Metal Solutions is a sheet metal manufacturing company based in South Australia. The company manufactures perforated screens, cladding products, custom fencing, privacy screens, balustrades, custom aluminium and steel ute trays and canopies as well as sheet metal components for bespoke engineering applications. Precision Sheet Metal Solutions has a large workshop equipped to manufacture multiple large-scale projects.

In the past 7 years, the workshop revenue has grown by over 4400% and over 162% for the group business. Including going from 8 employees to more than 30 employees in the manufacturing workshop, with 145 employees across the group. A true success story.

The Challenge

According to the Financial and Operations Manager from Precision Sheet Metal Solutions, Paul McCulloch, the manufacturer researched enterprise resource planning (ERP) software for a couple of years and reviewed at least 8 software as a service (SaaS) products.

In Paul’s role he oversees finance, operations and HR, and the search for data analysis software that could work with the different parts of the business in different locations was paramount.

“We needed an ERP that could integrate with a business like ours, where one part of the business is high volume and the other involves custom manufacturing. We needed to know where the stock was: what our true, in-real-time stock levels were,” he said.

For Paul the ease and transparency with real time visibility was key to the success of the business. He needed to know what usual work timeframes were and if a task took longer, he needed to understand the reason so the business could improve, otherwise the bottom line would stagnate.

Knowing work order status and stock levels, in real time, without being on the workshop floor was one of the benefits of M1 that Paul appreciated.

“Before we would place stock orders and service machines based on intelligent guesses, I wanted us to have more certainty in our decision making,” Paul said.

One of Paul’s largest considerations was having a product that would do the inventory, assist with the planning, and be agile enough to integrate orders from construction sites to the factory floor.

“Site works, as our main component of the work we do, means that building products need to be delivered to the site on time, otherwise, the cost blow-outs could be huge,” Paul said.

Construction site jobs can be massive, spanning multiple years and involving hundreds of panels and flashings. Visibility and traceability of each order and the costs involved with any delay are crucial to ensuring the business gets the best ROI possible.

Paul also needed an ERP that could adapt to him, not the other way around.“I needed an ERP that didn’t require me to customise it at great expense, or have it only do part of the job I needed,” Paul said.

“We needed an ERP that would take us through the initial order being placed on the construction site, to the invoice being developed and sent, to the parts ordered, the product delivery schedule set, the machines and employees required in the process allocated to the task, and finally, the end product being sent back to the construction site. We needed the whole manufacturing lifecycle to be covered,” he said.

Paul identified a further need for visibility over job costs, in real time, alerting him of any delays, and allowing him to make effective informed decisions quickly. He also required an on-site mobile app add-on that could push jobs directly from construction site to factory floor with minimal manual intervention to increase productivity and efficiency.

“Highly manual processes increase the chance for mistakes or delays. A person has to have the time, focus, knowledge, and willingness to be able to accurately, and in good time, fill out paperwork (on paper or online),” Paul said.

The Solution

Paul found the solution for Precision Sheet Metal Solutions was ECI Solutions enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, M1.

“The really cool thing about ECI’s M1 is that it is effective for custom jobs," Paul said. “M1 could take on the manufacturing side of our business. The product was integrated in our business and included integration of the app to allow on-site construction orders to reach the workshop floor in real-time.”

The Impact

Since Precision Sheet Metal Solutions has implemented the ECI Solutions ERP, M1, the business has seen a reduction in manual labour saved each week and seen an increase to the bottom line.

“After integrating the manufacturing software, we are reaping the rewards of increased visibility, real time transparency, and easy access to stock inventory and supply orders,” Paul said.

In 7 years, Precision Sheet Metal Solutions has gone from a business with paper planning to every workstation having a desktop computer. M1 has been integral to the planning, forecasting and pivoting where needed so that the business could thrive.

“Visibility was our number one challenge,” Paul said. “Visibility is needed from the original order coming in, through production, to delivery—visibility over process, resources, and time equates to financial success. Now I can easily work from anywhere and have complete visibility on how the workshop is tracking.”

The M1 implementation meant factory floor employees required some level of digital literacy but Paul found the integration easier than expected with inexperienced employees learning through sequence and repetition. Over time, factory floor workers input data into M1 themselves.

“Because we have transparency in all our work processes, our employees’ productivity and efficiency has increased. We can, at any moment, see how much stock is being used and compare stock levels and end-product turnout to previous like-for-like jobs,” he said.

The last time Precision Sheet Metal Solutions produced 350 panels in a week Paul was on the factory floor 24/7 ensuring high productivity and that there were no supply chain management issues impacting the product delivery. Now they can track the 350 panels in a week, and Paul doesn’t need to be on the factory floor. He has complete visibility on machine health and stock supplies from anywhere—even from a Queensland beach!

“We know when things aren’t on track and can easily identify if it’s a machine issue, a stock issue, or a personnel issue,” Paul said. “From basing decisions on manual logs to us now having in real time, accurate data about how many physical hours a certain job takes and how much waste stock is being produced, is absolutely crucial to our growth and longevity as a business.”