The use of the advanced production management system is welcomed by Andrea Gazzoni, co-owner of  G.R.G., who recalls the company’s determined approach in tackling the evolution of the IT systems: “A number of people who were sceptical about automation thought that an advanced system wasn’t suitable for a small company like us and might complicate management without any benefits. Now we know we made the right choice and that sceptics were wrong.”

G.R.G. is a company based in Cappella Cantone, near Cremona, and specialising in precision mechanics. It has been operating on the market for more than 15 years and is highly appreciated by its clients. Going back to the initial theme, the souvenir is now complete: “after working on the quality of the product, G.R.G. also wanted to attain high reliability levels in terms of deliveries, exactly within the time and in the amount requested by the client”.

Now it achieved the goal and the parties involved acknowledged that an important contribution was provided, in terms of attaining the objective and, above all, maintaining efficiency, by the IT system. The effective integration of the GPNX system with the Uno management system by Zucchetti was a decisive factor deployed and implemented thanks to the many years of collaboration between GP Progetti and Informatica Operativa, partner of Zucchetti regarded as a highly reliable company in the whole area around Cremona.

History

You will remember that in the six-eight years before its innovative jump, G.R.G. worked on perfecting and consolidating the Uno management system by taking the full management of the active and passive cycle to the desired level of service. In 2013 it tackled Production Management and the company took the ambitious decision of introducing an advanced system both from an operational and technological point of view. In other terms, the operational IT consultants fully understood the entrepreneurial spirit and proposed an integration with operating planning at the finite extended capacity to the data detection system of the factory.

Therefore, the relationship extended to GP Progetti started in 2014 and it immediately featured clear objectives and ways to achieve them, including the financial statement in line with the size of the company and the activation times in line with the restrained spirit of the operation.

Well, in a few months (from March to June 2014), the “team” formed by the client and suppliers came up with a fully operational prototype (intended as a subset of the full factory), tested and perfected it. It was then applied to all the operating machines and issued to users.

If one considers that the current system is, in all respects, operational according to all expectations and has all the envisaged components, one can happily day that the G.R.G. projects is a true success story. Indeed, the list of activated components includes the IT connection between the management system and the planning system with the advanced production system to effectively implement the technological programming platform with a finite capacity for all production orders on all the machines in the factory.

Examined after a year of use, the integrated system involved some considerations which can be effectively identified and that are all positive:

• The project met the set times and costs
• the tasks were relatively easy to assign to the (reduced) number of members of staff in the company
• the management of the project was satisfactory, especially in terms of ease of use
•  … and now it would be complicated and expensive to do without an integrated system!

as always with success stories, sharing objectives and the expertise of all the players led to the achieving of the agreed target, which is worth repeating, was truly ambitious and demanding.

The comment of Ms. Jessica, the current Production Plan Manager, i.e. the main user of the “Gantt Chart”, is interesting as a note from the field:

“in little time and without prior knowledge, I went from a traditional management of orders to graphic planning on a computer with a working method that gives me tome to calmly examine what I have to do”.

In conclusion

Along with the importance of the positive collaboration and determined approach to attain the goal shared by the client and the suppliers mentioned earlier, it must be highlighted that a small company can easily face the activation of an apparently complex system, which instead proves to be essential to fully manage the manufacturing company.

Once again, as an actual fact, at G.R.G. a single user of the production system integrated from an IT point of view with a user of the management system together process the workload required to ensure clients’ requests are met and feed the activities of two operating machines. Easily and efficiently.

With this organisational structure, G.R.G. can rely, as well as it undisputed manufacturing capacity, on an ability to respond to clients’ demands that maybe others don’t have.