Manufacturer sees efficiency gains after replacing spreadsheet-based order tracking with automated shop floor data collection and control.
January 11, 2011 – Casco Development, a leading provider of shop floor data collection software, has announced the successful implementation of its ShopVue system at Lydall Affinity, a New Hampshire-based manufacturer of industrial chillers and heat exchangers. Lydall recently selected and implemented ShopVue to extend its Oracle ERP system to the shop floor, replacing paper-based labor tracking and manual production scheduling spreadsheets. Lydall completed its ShopVue implementation on-budget and two weeks early, something executives attribute to outstanding preparation on both sides.
With ShopVue now installed, Lydall can get real-time labor data by job number and step, ensuring accurate historical costing on future projects. “As an engineer-to-order business, we utilize standard costing to stay profitable,” explains Lydall Affinity’s General Manager Bill Hume. “ShopVue is helping us achieve more accurate standards.”
In cells across Lydall’s facility, Operators use ShopVue on PCs to report time against jobs and steps, record comments about their work, and—with just two clicks—access electronic work instructions, checklists, and 3D schematic models. Lydall successfully trained its employees on ShopVue in two hour sessions and credit ShopVue’s friendly user interface for a quick and hassle-free rollout. “The way our employees adapted to ShopVue was tremendous; they were extremely positive,” says Hume.
In addition to viewing data in a variety of screens and reports, Lydall is also taking advantage of ShopVue’s ability to feed real-time data to Microsoft Excel, giving managers the ability to view and manipulate data using familiar technology. “Between our supervisors and our shop floor scheduler, we were spending 30 hours a week manually updating our production schedule,” says Ken Holmes, Director of Technology for Lydall Affinity. “With ShopVue, it’s now a completely automatic process.”
Lydall management says ShopVue marks the beginning of their commitment to harness new technology to drive process automation. “ShopVue will help us with Lean improvements,” explains Hume. “Now, we can identify, measure, and confirm that an activity is creating efficiency gains.”
About Lydall Affinity
Lydall Affinity designs and manufactures a broad line of chillers and heat exchangers. Headquartered in Manchester, Connecticut, Lydall, Inc. has been a publicly traded company since 1913 when it was known as the Colonial Board Company. Throughout much of the twentieth century, the business has focused on developing engineering competencies for a variety of global markets. In 1989, the Company was listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the trading symbol LDL.
About Casco Development
Casco Development, Inc. has been engineering best-of-breed software solutions for the manufacturing industry since 1984. Casco’s product, ShopVue, extends ERP systems to provide labor management, order tracking, and machine monitoring on the factory floor.
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Contact:
Casco Development, Inc.
(207) 773-0944
info@cascodev.com