Allied Global Engineering is a multinational engineering group with ambitious plans to unify long-standing engineering businesses in the UK.
The recent implementation of MRPeasy in one of their recently acquired subsidiaries is setting the stage for sustainable growth and increased efficiency.
Celebrating the legacy of UK’s precision engineering
EGL Vaughan is a CNC milling and turning company with a 40-year legacy that has established itself as a frontrunner in the UK’s precision machining sector. The company is dedicated to delivering top-tier, precision-engineered parts to both domestic and international markets and fostering strong, personalised relationships with its customers. Today, EGL Vaughan has 7 full-time employees and boasts a budding turnover of around £700,000.
In 2020, amid the challenges of the global pandemic, EGL Vaughan was acquired by Allied Global Engineering, an engineering conglomerate focused on unifying and celebrating the legacy of long-standing engineering businesses in the UK. As a company poised for expansion and eventually planning to merge its subsidiaries’ operations, Allied Global Engineering was on the lookout for a production management solution that would streamline work processes and help set the stage for growth.
The quest for a manufacturing software platform that could boost efficiency and offer system-wide traceability without breaking the bank, led EGL’s newly appointed Director of Operations, Jan-Marc Pickhan, to MRPeasy in 2022.
The path to precision – implementing MRPeasy
Up until the change in ownership, EGL Vaughan had been reliant on Excel spreadsheets for its production and inventory management. The new Director promptly recognised the need for an upgrade to tackle the lack of visibility and operational delays inherent in manual data management. The decision to adopt MRPeasy ahead of a sea of alternatives was driven by the software’s cost-effectiveness and ease of implementation.
As MRPeasy is purpose-built to be self-implemented, Jan-Marc took the process upon himself. Following EGL’s initial period of adjustment with the new software, Jan-Marc managed to bring MRPeasy’s basic functionalities online in a single weekend in June of 2023. He then proceeded to import production data like stock items and bills of materials to the system over the next couple of weeks.
Despite some initial challenges brought on by the rapid pace of transition, the staff adapted to the new system quite well. Instrumental in helping to ease the transformation were employee training and the incremental nature in which MRPeasy’s features were adopted. The spreadsheets were phased out gradually as from a specific time onwards, new manufacturing orders were taken on using MRPeasy, while existing ones were allowed to be completed using the old system.
Administrative load cut by 70%
Shifting from manual data entry to a unified cloud software’s data management capability has decisively boosted EGL Vaughan’s operational efficiency over a short span of time. Jan-Marc particularly touts MRPeasy’s streamlined quoting capabilities: “It used to take at least 2 hours to launch something into production just because of all the data that had to be transferred in Excel. Because we didn’t have a sophisticated system, it was a lot of manual data moving and that’s just asking for trouble.” With MRPeasy, converting quotes to manufacturing orders and sending purchase orders to suppliers, is done within minutes, dramatically reducing setup times.
Traceability has also been wholly enhanced thanks to MRPeasy’s automatic lot number generation which has allowed EGL Vaughan to gain visibility throughout the whole manufacturing process. Jan-Marc explained: “Everything now has an automatic lot number created by MRPeasy. We are stamping them on the materials, so they become traceable throughout the system. One of our customers even started using our lot numbers for tracing their own operations.”
MRPeasy is also enhancing EGL Vaughan’s production scheduling, increasing capacity planning accuracy and on time delivery rate, and has simplified managing the company’s many subcontractors. All in all, the new software has cut EGL Vaughan’s administrative load by as much as 70% in the short span of time since its implementation in mid-2023.
Positioning for sustainable growth
To other small and medium manufacturers looking to adopt production management software, Jan-Marc underscores the importance of a staged implementation and the clear communication of benefits to employees: “Implement it in the back-office first, then bring your supervisors up to speed, and finally introduce the changes to the shop floor. As long as you can clearly express the benefit of the new system for your employees, they will be happy to do the switch.”
He also lauds MRPeasy’s demo videos: “Our supervisor was somewhat reluctant to adopt the new system at first since he was the one doing all the receiving, etc. But the many detailed demo videos helped a lot in tackling the novelty and convincing him of how much more visibility and clarity MRPeasy brought with it.”
Jan-Marc is convinced that as EGL Vaughan’s use-case of MRPeasy gradually grows and more functionalities are implemented, operational efficiency gains will be felt well into the future. He is also looking forward to implementing the software in one of the parent company’s other subsidiaries, the recently acquired Mantec Engineering Limited, and enabling MRPeasy’s multiple production sites and facilities functionality.
