Speed productivity quality

That triple crown is the focus of Pratt & Whitney's race to a new enterprise resource planning system supported by automatic data capture.

-- Modern Materials Handling, 3/1/2001

Not long ago, aircraft engine maker Pratt & Whitney found it needed some new tools to power its manufacturing and warehousing operations. Quite simply, the company wanted more lift so it could takeoff from a shorter production runway.

Pratt & Whitney, which has its engines in more than half of the world's commercial airline fleet, operated like a job shop. As a result, there was always a generous level of inventory for the parts, components, and assemblies that go into its engines.

"Now we're trying to adjust to lean thinking where we have materials delivered just in time directly to the point of use so we can assemble jet engines with minimal capital investment," says Mike Paul, a program director for the company's new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. The company was also looking to trim engine production time from 6 weeks to a matter of days.

To make that happen, a new, company-wide ERP system has been teamed with wireless terminals (Intermec Technologies, 425-348-2600. www.intermec.com) and middleware (Epic Data, 604-273-9146, www.epicdata.com ). They replaced several fixed terminal based legacy systems that had developed over time across the company.

"We're trying to get all the information we need to make concise decisions," says Paul. "We want to glean three things from ERP - speed, productivity, and quality. We need speed to keep our capital investment down. Then as people handle parts, we want to increase their productivity. And we must continually verify that the right part arrives at the right place at the right time to assure the highest quality," he adds.

The goal is to develop optimized processes and to implement them globally in every aspect of our business, says Paul. "We are going to have all data reside in one location. So at any time, we can take a worldwide look at our inventory position of any particular part. In the past, because we were segregated, we really couldn't do that."

It was also decided early on that ERP could not be effective without ADC. Furthermore, the decision was made that the new ERP system would not be implemented and then ADC added as a tack on later. The two would be implemented together from the beginning.

The first site installed was an engine overhaul and repair facility in Singapore. That facility rebuilds 250 engines a year using inventory from four separate warehouses. The target was to make the switchover to the new systems in less than 3 months, scoring an important early success for the program.

The implementation team met that target. Today, 12 wireless terminals exchange information with a local host that is connected to the centralized ERP system in Connecticut. While some of the collected bar code data never goes beyond the local host, there are some transactions that require correlation with data in the centralized ERP system. In those cases, the data travels half way around the world from the hand-held terminals to Connecticut and then makes the return trip, all in less than 2 seconds.

Since Singapore successfully came on line in mid-1999, Pratt & Whitney has converted an additional 15 warehouses that support manufacturing in the U.S. to the new system. All came on between March and July of last year, says Jim Apicello, ERP project manager.

Each manufacturing site has three missions. These are; assembly of new engines to specification, production of standard spare parts, and building of engine assemblies. Multiple warehouses often serve a single manufacturing site.

The small hardware parts center in Middletown, Conn., which warehouses low-cost, high-volume parts such as nuts, bolts, and rivets in fixed-bin storage, operates the same as the other 14 warehouses now running the system.

Parts arrive in bar coded cartons that are scanned by a hand-held wireless terminal. This information is transmitted to the warehouse management module of the ERP system running on the local host which selects a storage location. A putaway ticket is printed automatically and the worker brings the inventory to the selected location. There, the bar code on the ticket and on the storage bin are scanned, confirming accurate putaway. Apicello explains that paper is used only because there were extreme difficulties writing an interface.

The warehouse management module also manages picking. It sends picking instructions by radio frequency to specific hand-held terminals. Workers then scan the bin's bar code to confirm picking. If there are shortages, the orderpicker notes them on the terminal which updates the ERP database.

Beyond managing the flow of inventory at its sites worldwide, Pratt & Whitney uses the new system to track how a part was manufactured, what tests were performed on it, and if there were any quality issues. "Our scope for the ERP system is from beginning to end of the product cycle," says Paul.