Keeping up with technology

Press, 1 May 1984, Page 22

Keeping up with technology

P. and D. Duncan is keeping up with technology through the use of an IBM System 34 computer equipped with advanced, integrated manufacturing software. The special-purpose software has allowed the company to completely reorganise its manufacturing around components rather than completed products. This is significant because of the attention devoted to reducing costs and accelerating manufacturing times through combining as many common user parts in each product. The company’s seed drills, its main product, feature one third parts that are common to other seed drills of different specifications. The other components are unique to the particular product. Before the System 34, the company was compelled to build up high inventories of the unique parts in order to have ample buffer stock ready for anticipated orders. Now, the inventory for these single product parts can be reduced because the computer is aware of orders

and the components committed to them. The same applies to the general-purpose parts used in the company’s products, which now include seed and fertiliser drills, ploughs, cultivators, field rollers, and harrows. Each part can be allocated to a specific order. The company’s inventory is based on an assessment of components, sub-assemblies, and finished products. The manufacturing requirements planning software takes the system on to the factory floor where the staff in stores and production management look after their own input and output. P. and D. Duncan’s systems manager, Mr Geoff Columbus, notes that by having the IBM terminals on the shop floor, production staff has a greater insight into the total manufacturing picture. . In the words of the company’s general manager Mr Noel Saxton, the work is “pulled” as production people have information about pending orders and the parts ready to meet these orders. In effect, the computer

system provides the company with an in-depth biography of each ordered product and the parts required to make it into a finished product. This product planning is accompanied by a substantial amount of English-lan-guage feedback from the computer itself. -This information is returned to the user as an immediate response on the screen. Thus, the System 34 warns if incompatible parts are being entered as a component for any particular product. It warns if the

same part has been allocated twice to any one finished unit. This on-line system also gives staff an easily defined “audit” trail into the whereabouts and availability of stock between the company’s three manufacturing sites in the Christchurch area. An important advantage of the system, notes Mr Saxton, is that it makes “knowledge available to everyone.” The company has encouraged production staff to use the on-line screens at all times.