Viscount Plastics stretches productivity and profits

Viscount Plastics has eight manufacturing plants in Australasia and a further five in South East Asia. Several years ago, Viscount’s head office set a goal to achieve world’s best practice within the plastic moulding industry.

To achieve this goal a lean manufacturing strategy was adopted and KPI’s such as stock turns, inventory accuracy, reject rates, cycle efficiency and equipment utilization were established. During this process it became clear that to achieve the KPIs it would be necessary to implement a software package which would support the program.

• Ease of use – AspectPL is rich with functionality and yet it is intuitive and easy to use
• Real time – information is collected in real time so it is accurate up to the minute
• Reporting – AspectPL is able to provide reports highlighting issues in the factory such as raw material and labour resource requirements
• Connectability – AspectPL’s ability to connect to Viscount’s Material Resource Planning (MRP) systems gave Viscount a seamless connection to work orders and bills of material information  – eliminating the need for double entry of data

AspectPL was initially installed in Viscount’s Auckland plant. Month on month improvements in plant OEE meant significant results were achieved, establishing the Auckland plant as the benchmark for rolling out the product to the other branches.

Viscount’s Technology Development Manager, John Buckley, recognized that AspectPL was a tool that could help Viscount achieve its best practice goals. “AspectPL was brought to our attention by our Auckland management and was already proven in the plastics industry which was one reason it appealed,” explains Mr Buckley. “The real and measurable improvements we have observed in Auckland have flowed into our other branches as AspectPL was installed in each factory”.

David Ralph, Operations Manager at Viscount Auckland commented “Almost immediately we began seeing results. I was particularly impressed by how quickly our staff were able to get to grips with AspectPL. Not only is it user friendly, but because it delivers measurable results and there was no need for us to convince staff of its benefits. They could see it for themselves.”

“We have seen gains in many operational areas of our business. For example, we used to have a number of people allocated to managing our complex production schedule on a full time basis. Now one person is responsible for the schedule and it’s a part time job. We are able to extract raw materials requirements across the whole factory for any given period and order just in time where possible. This has allowed us to get the best possible price.”

Results

“We’ve seen an increase in productivity of between 10% and 15%,” says David. “Because AspectPL is so tightly focused on measuring OEE, that improvement hasn’t just been a one off. Since installing AspectPL, we’ve been able to maintain that level of productivity improvement every year.

“We were confident we’d achieve a great ROI from this investment, but AspectPL has exceeded our expectations. It’s no surprise to me that all 10 Viscount Plastics factories have now installed the system. And those results I just mentioned – they’re across all factories. We couldn’t be more thrilled.”