Geeta Transformer: seven departments, two companies, and a drawer full of diaries

The situation

Geeta Transformer builds transformers. Raw material comes in at one end, and the product passes through seven departments before it is finished. Each department has its own team, and because the work in each one is a different difficulty, each has its own rate per piece.

That arrangement works. What it does not do is answer questions.

How much raw material is there altogether? How much of it is lying in which department? What needs ordering next, and how much of it? None of those had an answer anybody could check, which meant purchasing was done on memory and on the feeling that something was running low.

Wages were worked out from diaries. Every evening, every worker in every department went to their manager and said how many pieces they had made that day, and the manager wrote it down. At the end of the month the manager opened each diary, added up the pieces one by one, and multiplied by that department's rate. That is the wages of an entire factory resting on handwriting and arithmetic done once a month under time pressure.

And there were two companies, with product moving between them. So "how much stock do we have" did not have a single answer either. Neither did the question that matters most to a customer waiting for a delivery: how far along is this order, and which department are the remaining pieces sitting in.

What we built

One system covering both companies, built for this factory and no other. A transformer that passes through seven departments at seven different rates is not something a standard product is shaped for.

Six months from the first conversation to the whole business running on it.

• Raw material stock by department: what is where, right now
• Purchasing: what to order and how much, worked out from what is actually being consumed
• Order progress: how far along each order is, and which department the remaining pieces are in
• Finished stock, by product
• Production entered per piece, per worker, per department
• Wages calculated automatically from the pieces entered and each department's own rate
• Both companies in one view, including the stock that moves between them

What changed

The owner no longer walks the floor to find out what is happening on it. Raw stock by department, order progress as a percentage, finished stock and every worker's wages are each a single click.

The diaries are gone. Wages are now built from what was recorded as the work happened, rather than reconstructed from handwriting at the end of the month.

The business runs digitally end to end.