As part of its five-year business plan, Arrowsmith Engineering has developed a strategic change programme to meet the future demands of the complex aerospace components manufactured by the company. A crucial part of the company’s SC21 Continuous Sustainable Improvement Plan (CSIP) success, involves software specifically advanced MRP and CAD/CAM programs supplied by Planit.

Coventry-based Arrowsmith Engineering was established in 1967. It was purchased by the Aldridge family in 1995 when the company had a turnover of £330,000 and employed 19 people. Today, thanks to steady organic growth the annual turnover has increased to £2 million with 35 staff working in two facilities offering 10,000 ft2 of production shopfloor.

 

Predominantly supplying the aerospace sector the company started working with Rolls-Royce in 1970 and has worked with the aero engine manufacturer ever since. Production is focused on C-class engine parts supplied as spares or as research and development parts for next generation engines. This involves working with all the high grade aerospace materials such as Inconnel, as well as heat resistant super alloys (HRSA) for both the hot and cold sides of the engine. While C-class work is high precision it is relatively low volume, with a typical batch size of around 50. For the motorsport sector, another key industry supported by Arrowsmith, the batches are even smaller, with 1 to 4 off being the norm. Although the machine tools used by the company are capable of economically running batches of up to 10,000 parts.

“The steady growth to hit £2 million turnover with the number of staff we have, we felt, was not fully supported by our process and management systems. These needed to be updated to match the increased demands placed on them by the additional performance of the business,” explains director, Jason Aldridge. “We have been working with the Manufacturing Advisory Service (MAS) on a strategic change programme to bring in new processes and software, and to up-skilling our staff to meet the demands of the new products we are looking to machine.”

Accredited to ISO 9001, AS 9100 as well as ISO 14001 environmental standard and with a very skilled workforce; the company was primed to move forward and is about 18 months into its five-year business plan. This encompasses a £1.85 million investment strategy for facilities, equipment and training. The complex training plan runs hand-in-hand with the business plan. Says Jason Aldridge: “The people at MAS are very helpful and knowledgeable, they have worked with other companies that have made the journey we are on and it is good to receive the guidance and recommendations for what works.”

Integral to the changes needed to improve the management support of the business was a highly effective MRP system supplied by Jobshop. Key amongst the benefits of this powerful software is the capacity planning and management capability of Jobshop allowing Arrowsmith to use shopfloor data collection, via bar code readers and touch screen shopfloor terminals. These are located within both of the company’s machine shops as well as in the inspection department so work can be accurately tracked through the whole manufacturing process.

 

As part of the change strategy the company constructed a Value Stream Map (VSM), which highlighted the points of weakness for the business. One of the main problems was the process houses – defined as an externally supplied technology or service – which for Arrowsmith is surface finishing. Jason Aldridge says: “When the parts leave our site they are out of our control, but within our control is getting the parts to the process house on time, ensuring the information is available and correct. Of course we have to get the work started in the right order and with enough time to get it to the surface finishing suppliers so they can carry out their operations without compromising the quality. Here the Jobshop system will manage the start sequence because it has very accurate manufacturing data input into its database, so that the software can accurately determine how much time to assign each job.”

He continues: “We spent a year investigating the market and initially looked at seven MRP software suppliers, although this list was quickly cut to three. Following visits to see the suppliers, customer visits were arranged. A trip to a user confirmed that Jobshop was the most capable system. It was a system we could understand and the one that we felt would deliver what we wanted.”

Currently using five floating licences, Jobshop has replaced the company’s bespoke manufacturing data system with all the legacy data being cleaned and transferred over to the new system. This will carry out EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) activities and will also link to the company’s Sage accounts system for invoice generation. Jobshop’s engineers are currently creating a report to monitor Arrowsmith’s inspection gauges so it will automatically identify when they require calibration.

The installation of software with such wide ranging functionality tends to highlight other areas of weakness, but Jason Aldridge does not view this as a negative point because as he points out it allows you to apply the skills and knowledge of your staff to strengthen these areas. “Like most growing companies we have been successful because of the skills of our people rather than our processes. Now we need to improve our processes to match and this will improve our efficiencies,” he says.

For example, Arrowsmith has applied visual FAIR (First Article Inspection Report) software within the inspection department, which is linked directly to the customer. All the data and annotation notes are shown on the screen which reduces the risk of parts being measured incorrectly and therefore failing inspection. It’s not just finished parts that can be checked, any components with critical datum points can be checked at suitable points during the manufacturing sequence. This links to the Jobshop system so that the management teams can track all work in progress.
 
With three apprentices, four staff studying NVQs and two degree students funded to attend evening classes – one specialising in CAD/CAM and the other in manufacturing processes – Arrowsmith lists training as a high priority. As such, a comprehensive training programme is underway with Jobshop which will involve the whole company. Jason Aldridge is involved with every single training session because he believes commitment has to come from the directors of the company.

As he states: “We have spent as much on training for the Alphacam CAD/CAM and Jobshop MRP software as we did on the software itself. The investment is part of the plan, the idea being to upgrade the CAD/CAM software, so that we could fully use our existing machine tools. For example we have post processors for our 4-axis machines, which provide almost 5-axis capability; it is very near it in terms of what can be machined. The plan originally called for one seat of Alphacam, but this has been increase to two with the recent installation of the 3D modelling unit.”

 

The aim, of course, is to improve its OTIF (On Time, In Full) delivery record and the MRP and CAD/CAM systems were purchased as part of the company’s SC21 Continuous Sustainable Improvement Plan (CSIP). “Our customers are looking forward to us getting the system fully operational because of the benefits it will bring to the business. However, we are not rushing what we are doing as we want to get it right. We are changing a lot of what we do but the benchmark in the aerospace industry is very high and we want to ensure that we up to the mark. With help from MAS and from specialist suppliers such as Planit providing Alphacam and Jobshop we can achieve our goals,” Jason Aldridge concludes.