Fully integrating Vero Software’s powerful ERP job management solution, WorkPLAN, into their manufacturing process, gives a mould-tool manufacturer four clear benefits.

Alfanar Moulds manufactures around ten mould tools a month, and around 200 jigs, fixtures and mechanical parts. Many of their finished tools are used by their Saudi-based sister companies Alfanar Electrical Systems and Alfanar Ceramics, along with customers such as Henrich Kopp, Saudi Ceramics, Steel Case Jeraisy, Abdul Latif Jameel Co. Ltd., and Zamil Plastics.

Senior Design Engineer Shivakumar Gouda uses WorkPLAN on a daily basis, and says three features are particularly important:

  • The technical breakdown offered by the Process planning functionality
  • Estimator
  • Touch screen capability.

“We get four huge benefits from WorkPlan – live updates of each job status; the entire history of every process, the capacity booking status, and a 25 per cent reduction in manual data entry.”

Overall, 15 employees use WorkPLAN, with 11 using touch screen and task recording, and two working with the time management module. Other items of functionality which are deployed regularly are Estimator, Job Tracker, Info Manager, CRM, Scheduler, and Quality.

Vero developed WorkPLAN to meet the needs and replicate the specific procedures and codes of CAD/CAM based industries. Vero’s Technical Manager for India, Nilesh Mahajan, says WorkPLAN gives users full control over their manufacturing processes and increases productivity, by managing budgets, time, manpower, materials, resources and costs.

With Alfanar Moulds having a total of 64 machine tools, including conventional lathes and mills, grinders, CNC 3-axis and 5-axis milling machines, EDM cutters, drills and injection moulders, Nilesh Mahajan says WorkPLAN is the ideal solution for keeping track of their myriad shop floor and office and operations. “It manages complete business activity starting from creating a Quote and going right through to shipping the job out and 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 optimize their business and production processes and manage all their resources. WorkPLAN is the ideal solution to ensure this happens.”

In the year that Alfanar Moulds have been using WorkPLAN, Shivakumar Gouda says they have come to rely on specific reports that it generates, including:

  • Job loading plan
  • Sales order master
  • Quotation master
  • Utilization reports
  • Efficiency repots
  • Order status dashboard
  • Plan v Actual.

He concludes by saying: “WorkPLAN is a powerful and flexible project management software and has easily been configured to our specific requirements. It gives us live updates of every job status whenever we need them.”