faurecia

CASE STUDY
FAURECIA
Faurecia finds controlling the business less exhausting with the help of
Made2Manage
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CASE STUDY
2
FAURECIA
CUSTOMER DETAILS
Columbus, Indiana, exhaust system
engineering and prototyping division of
global corporation Faurecia (France)
Exhaust system prototyping
Serves major OEMs Ford, Chrysler, GM,
VW, BMW and others
Also serves large equipment makers such
as John Deere, Caterpillar
INDUSTRY
CHALLENGES
• Obsolete and spreadsheet-based inventory and scheduling tools
• No real scheduling or work tracking capability
• Inability to quote accurate completion dates
BENEFITS
• Better control of inventory, visibility into needs and lead times
• Reduced disruption, expediting, chaos on the plant floor
• Better able to schedule work, quote delivery times
• Productivity increases
Automotive
APTEAN SOLUTION
Made2Manage
Faurecia’s Columbus, Indiana, operation specializes in design and prototyping of
automotive and heavy equipment exhaust systems. Serving the major automakers
including Ford, Chrysler, GM, VW and BMW among others’ as well as equipment
makers like John Deere and Caterpillar, Faurecia is a global leader in exhaust
system design.
The Columbus operation is housed in three facilities – Engineering, Test, and
Prototyping, with only the latter involved in production. The prototyping plant
has been using Made2Manage ERP since 1995 to manage production and
inventory. “The rest of the corporation uses other software, including wellknown “big” systems but we’ve found that nothing else does as good a job as
Made2Manage does for our job shop environment,” according to Barry Turnbow,
Support Manager for the Faurecia prototype shop and the person responsible for
scheduling and inventory.
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FAURECIA
When Faurecia chose to implement Made2Manage, they had
been relying on an outdated DOS-based system and a lot of
spreadsheets. “We really needed better control of our inventory,”
Turnbow says. “It was very difficult to know what to order. It was
“
Nothing else out there does as good a
job of managing a job shop prototyping
operation as Made2Manage.
“
CASE STUDY
a real challenge to handle the jobs and the paperwork and difficult
to know when a job would be ready to ship.”
As a prototyping shop, Turnbow’s group is always under pressure
Barry Turnbow
Support Manager
Faurecia
to deliver quickly, and every job is different. “We hold some
inventory of common materials but we often have to bring in
specific items for a job,” he says. When a new order comes in, a
quick availability check tells the shop what they have in inventory
and what they need. “Made2Manage really helps us do that,
reducing our lead time and helping to meet customer requests.”
While exhaust systems are their business, they have not come
near exhausting the capabilities of their Made2Manage ERP. In
fact, Faurecia recently signed a multi--year support contract.
According to Turnbow, “the value Aptean offers with its support
and maintenance, both of which we have leaned on throughout
Those new orders are also likely to be disruptive to any production
the years, made it an easy decision to lock up a long-term contract
schedule they already have in place. Made2Manage quickly tells
with set, guaranteed rates for these services.”
them what impact the new order will have on the other work that
is already scheduled.
“We have found Made2Manage is easy to learn and very user
“The system really suits our needs,” Turnbow says, “and we’re
continuing to rely on Made2Manage to help us keep our
customers happy.”
friendly,” Turnbow adds. “And Aptean support has been very
good for us.”
In the spirit of continuous improvement, Faurecia’s prototype
shop is working on doing a better job with planning, taking
more advantage of the software’s abilities. There’s always more
they can do, and more the system can do, to help them better
serve their customers. “Planning will help us get a better handle
on our capacity and do a better job of scheduling and quoting
completion dates,” Turnbow says. “We’ll be better able to utilize
our resources and improve productivity and output.
More than 9,000 customers around the world rely on us to give them a competitive edge. By providing innovative,
industry-driven enterprise application software, Aptean helps businesses to satisfy their customers, operate most efficiently,
and stay at the forefront of their industry.
For more information, visit: www.aptean.com
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