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Dudley Tool & Engineering

Dudley Tool & Engineering

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Dudley Tool & Engineering

Dudley Tool & Engineering is a family-owned business established more than 30 years ago by its Chairman Ted Millard in the West Midlands. It's mission is to provide high-quality, cost-effective press-work services to leading U.K. and European companies.

Dudley Tool & Engineering, a leader in manufacturing high-quality presswork services, wanted to replace its ageing Sage Line 100 business performance management system. It was difficult to update, costly to operate, and too inflexible for the company to compete with countries like China.

The growing manufacturer looked for a new system to achieve the following:

  • A complete overview of the shop floor, which makes 44 million components a year with a turnover of £2 million
  • The flexibility to change orders in line with customer demands up to minutes before production starts.

Advised by Microsoft Partner Technology Management, the company opted for a solution using Microsoft Dynamics NAV starting with the basic financial ledgers. The solution was successful for several reasons:

  • Migrating to Microsoft Dynamics NAV coincided with the adoption by the company of ‘lean manufacturing’ principles including zero waiting time, zero inventory, and cutting of actual process times.
  • Implementing Microsoft Dynamics NAV resulted in saving one and a quarter full-time equivalent posts at Dudley Engineering, because many manual business performance management processes have been automated.

Microsoft Dynamics NAV gave us a solution to run the business efficiently from top to bottom. Productivity and export sales are up while operating costs are down.

— David Millard, Dudley Tool & Engineering

Dudley Tool & Engineering acheived numerous benefits from undertaking the transition from an old, cumbersome system to a fresh, modern platform;

  • Production lead times fall from 21 days to 10 days because of better monitoring and visibility of processes on the shop floor.
  • Productivity rises by 21 per cent ensuring more sales and improved profitability.
  • Manufacturing costs drop by abolishing overtime and saving seven per cent on labour costs by reducing working hours. More time is freed for training.
  • Greater efficiency and better visibility means 21 per cent less stock needs to be held at the factory.
  • Sales executives can change customer orders seconds before production starts. • On-time delivery to customers improves by 21 per cent resulting in more satisfied clients and more repeat business.
  • Better feedback for customers from the company’s sales executives who are now freed from handling time-wasting paperwork.
  • Better visibility over the shop floor and control of the production cycle.

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