By integrating Vero Software’s WorkPlan ERP job management solution (www.workplan.com) into its manufacturing process, mould-tool maker Alfanar Moulds has gained a number of distinct benefits.

The company makes some 10 mould tools a month, along with about 200 jigs, fixtures and mechanical parts. Many of these tools are used by its Saudi-based sister companies — Alfanar Electrical Systems and Alfanar Ceramics — along with customers such as Heinrich Kopp, Saudi Ceramics, Steel Case Jeraisy, Abdul Latif Jameel Co Ltd, and Zamil Plastics.

Senior design engineer Shivakumar Gouda, who uses WorkPlan on a daily basis, says that three features are particularly important: the technical breakdown offered by the process-planning functionality; Estimator; and the touch-screen capability.

“These features give us live updates of each job status, the entire history of every process, the capacity-booking status, and a 25% reduction in manual data entry.”

Overall, 15 employees use WorkPlan, with 11 using touch-screen and task recording, and the others working with the time-management module. Other functions that are used regularly are Estimator, Job Tracker, Info Manager, CRM, Scheduler and Quality.

Vero’s technical manager for India, Nilesh Mahajan, says WorkPlan gives users full control over their manufacturing processes and increases their productivity by managing budgets, time, manpower, materials, resources and costs.

“It manages complete business activity, starting from creating a quote and going right through to shipping the job out and printing the delivery note.

“Being the first to deliver a well-pitched job quotation gives companies a decent head start over the competition, but to stay in the lead, they must provide high quality at a competitive price, with shorter delivery times.

“To do this, they have to optimise their business and production processes and manage all their resources.
WorkPlan ensures that this happens.”