Fastest growing manufacturing company select In2grate a second time for three Triplex sites.

Having seen huge gains at their Ketlon factory, the Barr family, who are building a major group of automotive components manufacturers, decided to implement the INFOR iSeries system from In2grate for their latest acquisition.

The deal will give Ketlon’s sister company, Triplex Components Machining, a common system for its’ factories at Hereford, Stratford-upon-Avon and Peterborough. Replacing a range of disparate and largely outdated systems, INFOR helped integrate core business processes with the business bought from Triplex Components Group.

Ketlon and Triplex manufacture precision parts for all of the major car makers in Europe including hubs, brake discs, ground gears and shafts manifolds, flywheels, and suspension parts.

Increased efficiency, less wastage and shorter lead times.
Increased efficiency, less wastage and shorter lead times are some of the benefits expected as these have already been seen at Ketlon’s factory at Paddock Wood near Brands Hatch.

Ketlon was then running an old version of the software and relied heavily on Excel spreadsheets and manual intervention. “Upgrading to the newest version of iSeries has cut workloads and gives us better quality information, faster,” says managing director Brian Barr.

Other benefits, he says, are easier reconciliations of information, faster information flows and significant cost savings through reduced manual input. “In general, it improves the business’s ability to observe itself operating.”

Ketlon did consider other options but an upgrade secured its investment in data and skills. iSeries is
also geared to the fast moving automotive sector.

“Working with In2grate means we can utilise our existing IBM AS400 servers and knowledge base, but more importantly we know what we will get from the system and from the supplier,” Barr said. “The implementation at Paddock Wood was unquestionably a pleasurable experience. What we want is the best price and minimum disruption to the business and that is what we get with In2grate.”

“We are confident in the people, trust the management and know we will get exactly what is promised, which today is rarely the case,” he said.

The Triplex and Ketlon systems will run separately, although there are plans to merge the finance purchasing functions in order to improve buying power and cut costs.

Success
Ketlon is a major success story. Formerly an ailing business within Unipart, it was bought with venture capital funding in March 2002. It is now debt free having paid off all loans three years ahead of schedule.

Brian Barr attributes much of this success to In2grate and a strategy based on the measurement room real-time data analysis system. This, he says, helps management focus on the issues of the business on an hourly basis and so resolve the problems that are preventing the business operating
at full capacity.