“I haven’t seen another glass package that can deal as well with multiple sites.”
Background
Fire Glass UK is a specialist supplier of fire rated glass, also providing acoustic, laminated and toughened safety glass. Since the business was founded 15 years ago, they have grown to be a market leader, with five branches across the country and another in northern France.
For the last five years they have used Gtrak 3 to manage sales and production in each of their manufacturing locations, together with combined analytics and live reporting across the entire group.
Managing growth across multiple sites
To provide the highest levels of customer service, Fire Glass UK manages customer orders centrally. This allows them to allocate work to the most appropriate site, not just according to the customer’s location, but also where there is capacity to deliver.
Order taking was previously very time-consuming, as they had to manually check production schedules and stock levels at each site. However, with Gtrak, the salesperson is able to review all of these details in one place and provide confirmation to the customer right away.
Gtrak 3 also brings production and sales data together for management, so they can keep on top of the collected sales figures and manage production across the group. There is customised reporting and analytics for different individuals and job roles.
Reducing the burden of traceability with barcode scanning
For Fire Glass UK and their customers, it is essential that every piece of glass they deliver can be traced through the factory and back to the original certified material. This had always been done manually, with sheets of paper completed at each workstation. Although it was effective it was time-consuming, on the shopfloor and in the office.
Fire Glass asked Jotika to implement barcode scanning, so Gtrak is now automatically updated at every step. Scanning a barcode on a piece of glass takes next to no time, and the data gathered by Gtrak provides full traceability data which is easily shared with customers.
The data from scanned barcodes also gives supervisors and managers live updates on the progress of customer orders, as well as insights into the performance of different workstations and operations.
Streamlined production and delivery planning
Gtrak allows managers in each Fire Glass branch to plan their production efficiently, without all the time-consuming manual work that was previously required. As the business has grown, Gtrak has shown them where they were reaching capacity to help them plan new investment, and to help them allocate work effectively to new machines.
When an urgent customer order comes in, Gtrak also makes it easy to see whether or not they are able to accept it. Where it previously took half an hour or more to rework production schedules around a new piece of work, Gtrak now allows them to do it almost instantly.
Cutting the cost of raw materials
The cost of glass has increased substantially in recent years and certified fire glass even more so. To help them reduce the cost of raw materials, Fire Glass use Gtrak to help them optimise glass cutting. They also use Gtrak for stock control, which is integrated with production planning to help them maintain optimal stock levels.
Outcomes
Fire Glass UK have been using Gtrak for the last five years. It has enabled them to achieve substantial growth, by greatly reducing the resources required to take orders and serve customers; cutting the time required for production planning; and ensuring traceability without laborious paperwork. It has also given management the insights they needed to stay focused on efficiency and customer service as the business has gone from strength to strength.
Gtrak has allowed us to grow fast and makes production planning really easy.
As we have grown, Gtrak has not been restrictive in any way and has helped us overcome the challenges of multiple branches. I haven’t seen another glass package that can deal as well with multiple sites.
Jonathon Booth, Operations Manager
