Witon Engineering Limited is a CNC precision turning subcontractor with an enviable reputation for quality and customer service. Established more than sixty years ago, the company has both ISO 9001:2000 and TS 16949 accreditations and operates a 'ship to line' service with full traceability. With an impressive investment in multi-spindle lathes, the company offers short lead times with one-hit machining and is able to provide an economic service for large and small batch quantities requiring very close tolerances. The company has rapidly grown in the past four years – helped by the installation of PSL's Datatrack software.
Following a previous implementation of another well known supplier’s manufacturing software package, Witon became disappointed with issues of inflexibility and poor service and ultimately become disillusioned with the objective of running the business through a manufacturing-based system. This led to a reappraisal of their business processes four years ago. Their previous experience had made them highly sceptical of any supplier’s ability to deliver the system they required.
Witon Engineering turned to PSL Datatrack. Their concerns were quickly overcome after a fast implementation that made an immediate difference. No sooner had PSL Datatrack been installed than it was realised there was more to Datatrack than had been foreseen and that their expectations had been exceeded. Witon Engineering could communicate more easily throughout the factory and offices, saving money by streamlining operations. They also found that keeping track of stock and materials was much simpler than before.
A problem with the previous manufacturing software had been that staff found it complicated in use and difficult to extract reliable information. They simply did not trust it and, years after purchasing the package, it was still not fully utilised.
With PSL Datatrack, however, once the initial installation was complete everyone involved felt comfortable with its intuitive interface and confident in its abilities. A decision was therefore made to quickly add the scheduling module and bar-coded shop floor data collection, concurrently. Production scheduling is now possible in a fraction of the time it used to take and the whole operation is more accurate, less wasteful and more efficient.
A major benefit of using PSL Datatrack has been the collaborative aspect of the relationship between Witon and PSL, and this has led to software changes being made that have been of direct benefit to Witon. Howard Sheldon, Director, says “PSL Datatrack has overcome all our problems of inflexibility and mistrust. We are now able to talk directly to the developers of PSL Datatrack at anytime and get immediate and appropriate service whenever we need it.”
“PSL Datatrack has enabled us to run our production and administration a lot more efficiently enabling faster production decision making, thus helping us to further enhance our customer relations.”
"We chose Datatrack as the software system to manage and bring together our production and administration systems. It's one of the best investments we have ever made."
