Raffenday
Raffenday - Looking for a new spark
"In many packaged solutions, unusual manufacturing requirements like ours are not
catered for. SAP Business One has given us what we want - dedicated functionality
with the ability to customise it as our business changes"
Nick Carter, Technical Director, Raffenday Ltd.
The need for physical stock checks and an inability to make system changes were
stifling Raffenday, an English supplier of automotive electrical equipment. The
company had to find a way to improve overall efficiency and automatically keep track
of materials wastage.
In early 2003 Raffenday Ltd., a global manufacturer and distributor of automotive
wiring harnesses and components, was being suffocated by its existing business system.
“To keep pace with the changes in our business, we had to constantly write custom-made
programs, which was costly,” explains Nick Carter, Technical Director. “We couldn't
upgrade because we would have lost the investments we’d made in the additional programs.
We needed a solution that was more flexible.”
Raffenday, with headquarters in Northamptonshire, was introduced to the SAP Business
One solution. “Our first questions were, can it be amended, and will we be able
to upgrade?” says Carter. “We were assured that both were possible.” Raffenday made
the decision in July 2003, the system was installed in August, the data was migrated
during October, and the new system went live November 1.
For Carter, the biggest advantage is the speed of data retrieval: “You can find
out literally anything from wherever you are in the system. You can drill up and
down into the data quickly and easily. As a result, we’ve improved customer service,
because we can access the information we need immediately.”
Another major benefit is improved waste management and stock control. “When you’re
making wiring harnesses, there is a certain amount of waste. Now we can add in a
waste factor to any wiring taken out of stock, which we couldn’t do before. That
way, we can continuously monitor and measure our waste and adjust the waste factor
accordingly, increasing accuracy all the time. But, most importantly, we have much
better stock control,” explains Carter.
Previously, because of the undocumented waste accumulation, Raffenday had to physically
check stock levels before it could commit to an order. Supported by the new SAP
software, the company has been able to reduce stock checks by a factor of 10 – a
considerable saving in labour and time.
"SAP Business One has given us what we wanted – dedicated functionality that we
can customise as our business changes," says Carter.
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