Exel News Stories
EFACS makes a connection at Wyretech
Wyretech, one of the leading specialist just-in-time manufacturers of wiring assemblies in the UK, is to install the EFACS ERP system from Exel.
Based in Hinckley, Leicester, Wyretech makes electrical systems for such markets as automotive, off-highway, defence and industrial applications. The company's product range includes wiring harnesses, battery cables, electronic control units and control panels. It is also stockist and distributor for such electrical components as bulbs, relays, proximity switches, fuses, cable ties, switchgear, gauges and electronic modules.
Only seven years old, Wyretech has grown at such a rapid pace - from zero to £5m turnover - that its original practice of using the Sage accounts package to handle its stock control and using the Promis system to do MRP is simply no longer feasible.
During the selection process for a new system, Wyretech looked at various options and narrowed it down to two that had similar functionality. Although the other system would have cost less, EFACS was chosen because it looked a far more modern system and had several extra capabilities that the other system didn't have.
"We are convinced that with EFACS we have chosen the best system for our needs." Mark Rylatt
Says Wyretech's Mark Rylatt: "Essentially, we had more confidence in EFACS' ability to deliver. Also, one of the main attractions of the system was that we saw that we could expand further with it than with any of the others on the market. But what sold us was how it looks - it looks much more up-to-date and more professional than some of the other systems we were looking at."
He adds: "Because our other systems were all separate and not linked to each other, there was a great deal of typing in of information more than once and this led to delays and increased the potential for errors. We wanted to eliminate dual entry of data and to improve our efficiency, so integration was extremely important."
The wire harnesses and cable assemblies that Wyretech makes are used in a variety of vehicles - a typical customer is Caterpillar - and the company can be making products in a wide range of options and volumes. A wire harness, for example, can be anything from a wire with a terminal on that takes less than a minute to produce to a major harness that could take days to produce. Also, the shop floor can be handling large scale production for a number of customers or working on low volume jobs, including one-offs.
Mark Rylatt says: "Our main aim is to improve our stock control because we are quite a reactive supplier so we need to make sure we have accurate data. Our products can be quite complex in that we can have hundreds of operations in a product and a couple of hundred different components, all in various quantities."
EFACS will also be helping to streamline the purchasing function at Wyretech. With its previous system, the company ran a computerised MRP analysis just once a month and did it manually for the rest of the time. This has the potential for orders to be missed and mistakes to be made.
"We're expanding all the time," says Mark Rylatt, "and we obviously needed to change how we operated. We needed to jump to the next stage because it was clear that things had become too complex for us to do manually any more. We are convinced that with EFACS we have chosen the best system for our needs."
