Press Release
For Immediate Release
11th November 2010

EMS Manufacturer Corintech halved lead times through ERP replacement

Sean Wigmore - CorintechCorintech Ltd, based in Fordingbridge, Hampshire is an electronic product design and manufacturing subcontractor, and is the sister company of Lascar Electronics (which is also a 123insight case study customer). Both companies were previously using an ageing DOS-based system. There was no connectivity to Microsoft Office or emails and the company was still printing documents in triplicate on tractor-fed dot matrix printers. Upgrades proved prohibitively expensive, so Lascar had settled on an alternative replacement solution, and Corintech planned to follow once the system was proven, however after an expensive failed implementation attempt both companies decided to look at alternatives.
Sean Wigmore, Operations Director said; "The plan was for Lascar to implement and get a system working and for us to then follow suit. We thought we'd both settled on a system and Lascar started to implement it. Unfortunately it did not deliver so they had to release themselves from it at considerable expense. They then implemented 123insight successfully and we started down the same path a year or so later."

In September 2007 Sean attended an Evaluation Workshop at 123 Insight Ltd's offices in Southampton, which he found refreshing; "I quite liked the workshop approach. It was very informal and it was easy for me to slip out of the office for a couple of hours and be back in the afternoon."

With the information received at the Workshop and the experience that they had seen with their sister company, Corintech decided to move forward with 123insight and registered the same month. An ERP implementation group was created within the company, and four staff were sent on the full training courses, part funded by MAS (Manufacturing Advisory Service) with two more receiving specific courses relevant to their roles. Back in the company these staff provided downstream training using the electronic documentation provided by 123 Insight Limited. Sean noted; "People picked up the elements they needed to do their job very quickly indeed."

The company spent the time between October and December 2007 cleansing twenty years of data and deciding what should be transferred. The network was updated to SQL 2005 by 123insight approved partner Blue Chip. Corintech chose January 1st to go live, coinciding with their new financial year. Sean found the process relatively straightforward; "Although the data cleaning exercise was time consuming the actual process of transferring it to 123insight was easy. We spent three days over Christmas transferring the data, came in on the first day back in January, loaded our sales orders back in and went live across all departments."

Immediately the company noticed several benefits. Some departments went completely paperless, as invoices and order acknowledgements were now generated in PDF format and emailed - overall the company saw a 40% reduction in paper usage. Leadtimes were halved. Sean explained; "We went through a government sponsored lean office programme and identified that our sales order process was too long; from receiving the order to being able to place orders for components was taking up to three weeks, and in our old system we had no way to reduce this. Now with 123insight, we've implemented a system whereby we have a 15 minute meeting at 8.30am every day and review the orders that need to be processed. We then load them onto 123insight, run MRP, which takes 3-4 minutes, enact the works order suggestions and then the purchasing team are ready to buy components. For a process that was taking 2-3 weeks we now achieve this in less than 24 hours."

Corintech are using 123insight's multi company database structure to full advantage. The company shares a manufacturing facility with its sister company Lascar in Hong Kong. The remote location connects via CITRIX to Corintech's servers in the UK. They now have their own company database within 123insight that allows them to sell to their customer base in China and provides a completely separate P&L structure as part of the seamless integration with Access Dimensions accounts.

The company's ability to handle more work with the same or less resources has also been tested. Shortly after going live a member of the accounts department left and the company has not yet had the need to replace them.
Support has been excellent, with Sean citing very few product related issues; "Usually all support questions are resolved on the phone straight away. We're on first name terms with all the girls in the office and I have to say that it's usually something we're doing wrong rather than a software issue. Also, they do listen to us if we suggest improvements to the way the system works. We've seen features that we've asked for come out in subsequent releases."

EMS Manufacturer Corintech have recently implemented 123insight's CRM option as they plan to launch their own range of standard products. Sean is confident that the system is well equipped to handle the company's planned growth; "We anticipate the company growing significantly on the back of these products. 123insight delivered some very good enhancements. We have better connectivity, more licences open to more people and better reporting."

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