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Background
Tegral Metal Forming is a member of the Tegral Group of companies, part of the international Etex Group. Headquartered in Belgium, Etex has an annual turnover of around 4 billion Euro and employs over 32,000 people worldwide in the manufacture of specialist building products.
The Tegral Group, based in Athy, Co. Kildare, was founded in 1936. Its reputation for excellence rests largely on the dedication and skills of its people, with successive generations of the same families making a continuous contribution to the company's growth and development. Today over 300 people work at Tegral Building Products, and an additional 100 people are employed in Tegral Metal Forming Ltd. The metal forming plant itself boasts state-of-the-art equipment and facilities, and manufactures products to the highest quality and consistency.
Business Requirement
Tegral Metal Forming Ltd. was implementing a new ERP software solution (Movex by Intentia). There was a need to integrate this system with order manufacture through the Metal Forming machines on the factory floor.
The key requirements of the system were
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- A data interface to Movex to download relevant orders and information to be accessed by the forming machines.
- A Graphical User Interface (GUI) which would allow orders to be filtered by product, order line item bundling, splitting and sorting.
- Output of selected order line item data to metal forming machine through a serial (RS232) interface cable.
- Production of manufacturing consignment label.
- A data interface that will update Movex with details of the orders that have been fully or partially manufactured.
Solution
Genbase Solutions worked in partnership with Tegral Metal Forming Ltd. over a period of four months to deliver the completed solution. The Graphical User Interface and Communications Interface was developed using Visual Basic and proprietary Movex A.P.I.’s for order status update. Genbase Solutions were responsible for the requirements analysis, system design, development and installation of the solution.
Conclusion
- Tegral Metal Forming Ltd. have significantly increased the level of efficiency in customer order manufacture by improving the quality and speed of information interfaces between systems. Re-keying of order data into legacy manufacturing interfaces is no longer required.
System
Architecture
- Windows 98 or 2000
- Visual Basic compiled executable with a backend MS Access Database
- IBM AS/400 Client Access Connectivity Software
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