Wealdpark Limited of St Helens in Merseyside manufactures precision turned parts for a wide range of customers. A member of the BTMA, the company has BS EN ISO 9001 and a major strength is providing a high quality service that includes a commitment to supplying defect free products manufactured to the most exacting standards. To help the company achieve these goals it has invested in PSL Datatrack production control software, contributing to an all round improvement in production procedures, product quality and traceability.
Wealdpark supplies a wide variety of companies in the aerospace, automotive, electrical, fastener, fire fighting, military and thermocouple industries. This diversification has helped when certain sectors have been quiet, but it also means that at any given time the company can be processing high numbers of individual orders which all have to be administered quickly and accurately. Many customers also ask for input into new designs and, approaching it from a different viewpoint, Wealdpark can often help them to reduce product costs.
The workshop includes the latest CNC sliding and fixed head lathes and vertical machining centres. This enables them to offer precision parts with quick turnaround times, in a range of materials including steel, brass, stainless steel, aluminium, copper, phosphor bronze, nylon, PVC and others.
Wealdpark decided it needed a system like PSL Datatrack because its existing system for quotations, purchase orders and order input required data to be input several times. This then had to be manually entered into the company’s accounts program for invoicing and financial records. It was a long and laborious process open to frequent errors and omissions, so in 2009 the company looked at a range of different software systems that would enable them to dispense with this repetitive manual administration.
“PSL Datatrack virtually mirrored our existing layouts and seemed easier to use than other systems,” says Director Phil Smith. “It has enabled us to streamline our processes and we can now retrieve any information at the push of a button. For me, the biggest benefit is the ease of invoicing and transfer of data to our accounts software in just a couple of clicks. To be honest, it is difficult to see how we managed before we had PSL Datatrack.”
Wealdpark does not have any sales force and business comes on recommendation. Therefore, the company needs to make sure everything is right and in this respect the all round benefits of the PSL Datatrack production control software cannot be underestimated. Employees have been empowered to be responsible for their own quality and this approach has seen a dramatic improvement in product quality, while PSL Datatrack’s automatic traceability system ensures rapid, easy and accurate ISO audits at the push of a button.
"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."
