Improving Machine and Labor Utilization Through Dashboards

Elgin Fastener Group is the largest American made single-source supplier of specialty fasteners in the nation, and the leading provider of system-critical engineered fastening solutions. They deliver the most innovative parts available to help grow businesses faster than ever before with just-in-time operation, consistent quality, and streamlined ordering process.

Performance Management Inhibited by Lack of Business Intelligence

As a portfolio company of a private equity firm, Elgin Fastener Group (EFG) was encouraged to roll out a business intelligence solution to better measure and manage performance against their value-creation plan. They engaged Blue Margin (BMI) for their experience in the manufacturing industry and expertise with Power BI, Azure, and SQL.

Prior to engaging BMI, EFG used their ERP, Epicor 10, to run reports for their quoting and sales processes. This provided helpful insight but often required further ad hoc reporting and manual analysis.

A Unified Reporting Database Supports Operational Data Visibility

To improve the impact and efficiency of their reporting, BMI organized EFG’s Epicor data into a single reporting database to support dashboards that provided total visibility through a single screen on Backlog Sales Projections, On-Time Delivery, and Inventory. BMI also created a calendar view of bookings that was displayed in their manufacturing warehouses to provide heads-up insight that enabled front-line workers to stay on top of fulfillment timelines.

Through discovery, BMI also identified opportunities to optimize reporting, including an Efficiency and Utilization report that replaced a cumbersome Excel workbook. This new reporting not only provided easier insight but replaced their monthly retrospective view with a daily realtime view.

Additionally, BMI is currently working with EFG on an executive sales pipeline report to aggregate all sales pipeline activities across the company.

Impact

  • Replaced monthly retrospectives with realtime insight into production
  • Empowered supervisors to drive greater labor and machine utilization
  • Improved production through shop floor dashboards

“The only way to move a company forward is to keep the information and communication flowing. You guys have been great. What Blue Margin does adds value to any organization.”

Supervisors Now Access Daily Reporting to Manage Staff

According to Jim Pastor, VP of Information Systems, the greatest impact has been on the manufacturing department. Supervisors review the Efficiency and Utilization report every morning to determine which technicians would benefit from more training, identify points of constraint, and pinpoint where they could combine two operations into one to increase efficiency.

Through a consultative approach, BMI built reporting solutions to address the business goals of EFG. As Pastor states, “I really like the way Blue Margin methodically approached the project. You leveraged our existing Excel data to capture all calculations. The cadence of the progress meetings and the PM process was done really well. You always focused on how your work would meet our business needs.”