Stepping it up

Improvements like this have solidified Richardson’s suspicion that better materials handling processes will be crucial to the success of Mold-Masters going forward.

“My employees used to say ‘we’re just stock keepers’ all the time. But if they don’t do their job, there’s no business. If inventory isn’t correct and they continuously have to back to the stockroom for the correct parts…well, we just don’t have time for that.”

Charging ahead
The shuttles’ installation is just the first of several projects Richardson has planned to update and automate the way Mold-Masters manages its inventory.

First on the agenda is the addition of two more shuttles—one for semi-assembled work-in-process systems awaiting spare parts, and one for tooling equipment.

The company is also considering using the Solochain software to automate its kanban system, which is still manual. It is also exploring the software’s ability to better manage the receiving process—today, inbound materials regularly show up in the ERP well before they are inducted into the shuttles.

Richardson’s wish list is long; among many other things, it includes the implementation of internal barcodes, the electronic transfer of freight tickets into the ERP and the addition of a giant electronic ‘scoreboard’ to let everyone on the floor—from inventory to assembly to shipping—the status of each order.

“We want to incorporate everything from shipping to receiving,” he says. “We want evolution on the distribution side. More visual cues, more status updates.”

If his plans seem overly ambitious, it’s worth noting how far Mold-Masters has come in the past two years. All told, the company’s f
irst step towards automating the stockroom has improved productivity by more than 300 percent.

“The inventory setup of the whole operation has changed,” Richardson says. “We’ve gone from mass confusion with people running around the shelves to a stable area with good quantities where everything is correct.

“Everything’s in place, and everything flows.”